Get Your Guns Up! It's You Or The Damn Feral Cat!

A sharp-eyed reader of this blog in Madison, WI passed along an item that illustrates Lone Star priorities in a time of war, $100-a-barrel oil, and global warming. A few years back, this same reader sent along an item about the feral cat problem in Cheesehead Land. Now, it seems there is a feral cat problem in Galveston County, TX. Only Texas can produce a gun-totin' bird lover, though. A gun-totin' cat lover in Wisconsin isn't possible because Wisconsin doesn't have a right-to-carry law. In Texas, there can be a shootout between cat-lovers and bird-lovers. As it turned out, the Galveston cat-lover (lacking a gun at the moment) ran the bird-lovin' cat killer off the road after giving chase. No wonder the supporters of the Texas Tech Red Raiders say: "Get your guns up!" That sure beat hell out crying "Hark!" or "Here, Kitty, Kitty!" If this is (fair & balanced) folly, so be it.

[x Wisconsin State Journal]
Cat killer is big news in Texas
By Bill Wineke

It's a matter of perspective, I guess.

While most of the world is concerned about war, rumors of war, global warming and $100-a-barrel oil, the big news in Texas is cat killing.

Killing pet cats in Texas is illegal; killing wild cats is not.

If you shoot a pet cat in Texas, you could be fined $10,000 fine and jailed for six months to two years.

But you can shoot a feral cat with impunity.

The problem for Jim Stevenson, founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, is that he mistook Cat One for Cat Two.

On Nov. 8, Stevenson aimed a .22 caliber rifle filled with hollow point bullets and shot dead a cat near the San Luis Pass Bridge. As one of the state's most prominent birders, Stevenson has a strong dislike for outdoor cats. He thinks outdoor cats have a propensity to stalk and kill birds — most likely because all cats have a propensity to stalk and kill birds.

What Stevenson didn't know is the cat he shot had a name, Mama Cat.

Mama Cat and several other strays had taken up residence at the toll bridge because toll collector John Newland fed them and hung cat toys under the bridge to make them feel at home.

Newland was not happy at seeing his "pet" cat killed. He jumped into his vehicle and took off after Stevenson, who was driving a white van emblazoned with the name "Galveston Ornithological Society." The vehicles collided and Newland called the cops.

Stevenson was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals. A jury deliberated his fate but could not come to a conclusion, so the drama ended — for now — in a mistrial.

If all this strikes you as a little overdramatic for a cat that lived under a bridge, you don't know cat lovers.

We faced a feral cat battle in Wisconsin in 2005. The Wisconsin Conservation Congress suggested amending state laws to classify wild cats as an "unprotected species." Had that happened, people would have been free to shoot feral cats the same way they can now shoot gophers or, for that matter, feral pigs.

The reasoning was Wisconsin has an estimated 2 million feral cats and they kill — we think — lots of songbirds, as many as 139 million a year by some estimates. Or, as few as 8 million by other estimates. The fact is we don't know much about feral cats or about their birding abilities. But we do know cat lovers are more vociferous than bird lovers. The proposal never got off the ground.

That's probably a good thing. When you see what's going on in Galveston, you can be glad we don't have to force juries here to determine whether cats are feral or tame.

You do have to wonder, though, about a society that can't seem to agree on a definition of "torture" when it comes to human beings but is more than willing to go to the mat to defend bird-killing cats.

[Bill Wineke writes a personal column for the State Journal, where he has worked since 1963. He also is an ordained clergyman of the United Church of Christ.]

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