[FRIAM] Kill it!

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

Great reflection on domesticated cats...

I have had a lifetime relationship with both cats and dogs myself.   As
a child, I believed *all* cats were female and most dogs were male.  
This was because the rural context I lived in, the male cats roamed
freely and likely were "thinned" heavily by coyotes and owls (and
perhaps bobcats also) and were essentially feral.   Females were almost
always obviously female because they were raising a litter in a barn
other outbuilding and being offered food consistently, they *tolerated*
human contact and the kittens were regularly handled by humans,
sometimes adopting humans as "their familiar" (or vice-versa).  I
suspect that male kittens were sacrificed as they matured while the
females were gifted forward as self-regenerating "barn cats".  I don't
think I ever saw a cat living inside a house before I was about 12.  
While they *may* have been effective birders in their outdoor context,
the most common (by far) delivered/found carcass was a mouse, ground
squirrel, packrat, or the occasionally baby bunny or gopher.   I do
understand that in many contexts (acutely tropical islands) cats are
devastating invasive-species predators entirely disrupting the
ecosystems they have invaded.

  Dogs were usually kept as working herders or guards and were more
often than not the latter were unneutered males.   Feral dogs were not
tolerated, any dog not respecting it's own territorial boundaries did
not last long at the hands of the gun-toting neighbors.   Any dog
outside of it's own territory was assumed to be rogue and intending harm
to livestock, etc.    House-dogs were also very rare (some were allowed
inside in special contexts) and lap-dogs were unheard of.   

My parents allowed a couple of cats to take up residence with us during
my growing up, following (mostly) the protocols described above.  
Kittens "disappeared" within several months, ostensibly being adopted
out, but I suspect not exclusively (e.g. males).   My first adult "cat
ownership" was with a partner whose daughter was a pet hoarder (and she
herself was a milder one).   They would take turns bringing home stray
animals (mostly cats, but also dogs, ferrets, etc.) with the idea of
"rehoming" them... but in fact we had at least 3 indoor/outdoor cats at
any time, and often as many as 10.   A few did get rehomed as planned,
but too many of them got "rehomed" into a coyote's belly.   This event
(simple disappearance) usually provoked a trip to the animal shelter to
"fill the hole".  I really never felt good about this at all...  it
seemed so cruel to just keep "saving them from the shelter" to "feed
them to the coyotes".   I became inured to this, accepting that one fate
was not a lot worse than another, if not for the emotional whiplash of
becoming attached to an animal that was very likely to be gone in a few
months (feeding a coyote).  I lobbied for "indoor only" cat keeping.  
At least the ferrets were not allowed to roam, though they might have
been better for knocking down the gopher population.   At one point, a
black tomcat adopted our property (3 acres, 5 buildings bordering a
small canyon).   He was very sweet with people but enjoyed desperately
beating up the "housecats",  perhaps it was all S&M play as they were
all (neutered) females... but the bottom line was, we quit losing them
to coyotes because "Hamlet" (aka "Ham Omelet") would give them "what
for" anytime they ventured outdoors.   It was a good balance...   we had
a very aggressive rodent-killer who "managed" the harem of (now mostly)
indoor females quite well.   One day someone walking by recognized him
as being their neighbor's cat (living a mile away)... we invited the
previous owners to come pick him up, they did, we never saw him again,
and we went back to losing a cat every few months.   <sigh>.

At my present location (also abutting wildness),  I have had 5 different
(mostly) housecats.   My partner at the time had never had cats until we
woke one morning to a full-grown kitten perched on the top of the
bears-head on the top of a totem pole my father had carved.  It was 20'
off the ground but only 6' off the deck to our bedroom.  Helping the
(stranded?) cat down, it adopted my partner as her "familiar"   and they
bonded.   My partner insisted on not restricting the cat to the house,
but we had a large dog who maintained a good perimeter with the wild
predators, so it was a couple of years before that one went down the
gullet (presumably) of a coyote (or more likely owl?).   True to form,
she replaced this cat almost immediately with two kittens, one who died
of an infant  feline disease (within weeks of adoption).  I took it upon
myself to try to recreate the "Hamlet" experience by adopting 4 feral
cats from a rescue group that neuters and marks (a notch in the ear)
them and gives them to rural properties as "barn cats".  I installed the
three miserable/angry creatures in one of our outbuildings which was
definitely rodent-infested.   Once released they were quite furtive (as
expected) and never allowed humans to approach (even with treats) though
they did happily eat the food we gave them (and drank from our small
pond).    These (un?)lucky beasts did their job, the house cat stayed in
the house 99% of the time and the outbuilding rodent flux stayed down.  
Yes, we did find occasional "little brown bird" feathers strewn about.  
It took about 2 years for these fine ferals to thin down to 0...
unfortunately one of them ventured to the nearby highway and became
roadkill.   I couldn't feel as righteous about feeding the wheels of
commuters as I did about feeding the coyotes and owls.   I don't think I
will do that again.   My current cat is a hand-me-down from my daughter
who needed to reduce her responsibilities after a divorce (already had a
dog and a baby)...  this cat is 99% indoor by her choice, I don't give
her free access to the outdoors, but when she does get the chance, she
ventures out for 5-10 minutes, skulks around a little, and comes back
inside (she is very old) to the warmth/coolth where food and water is
always available.   She still knocks out any mouse dumb enough to invade
the house, and has even come up with a pack-rat once...   maybe she
brought it in during a minor foray?

Thanks for the new (to me) collective noun of "Clowder".

- Steve


On 8/26/21 8:07 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> So, a wildlife ecologist friend of mine (who meatspace introduced me to Looney (WSDA employee who discovered murder hornets here (who also hangs at the local pub) [‡])) argues that domestic cats, as an invasive species, are more horrifying than murder hornets, or english ivy, or the new zealand mudsnail, etc. He focuses on how they're merely killing machines, with which I agree. And goes with the usual "keep them inside" rhetoric.
>
> But I think I landed on an argument that he couldn't respond to. The typical evolutionary argument against domestic cats is that we neuter/spay the ones with the qualities we like, leaving the ferals to reproduce and evolve. And there's plenty of evidence that a clowder of ferals wreaks more havoc on a local ecosystem than a disorganized collection of house cats ever does. (Distributions of house cats territory drop off at more than ~100 m from their home. So unless the cat lives on the border of a wild area, it's impact on wild life is quite small. In contrast, feral clowders end up in wilder areas.)
>
> To boot, I have an anecdote. When we moved into this house, which is buttressed by a fairly wild ravine with owls and wild rabbits and such, there was a feral clowder living in a dilapidated house at the crook of the ravine (which leads down toward capitol lake). Our alpha, Scooter, kept fighting with at least one of these ferals. He lost quite badly one time, but due to our policy of universal healthcare, Scooter lives to fight again. Now the feral clowder is gone, thereby saving the lives of who knows how many little critters in the ravine. Scooter sporadically brings home a mouse, mole, or "little brown bird". But it's pretty rare now that he's pushing 12 or 13. So, we could say he's an ecologically ethical hunter, even if it's unintentional.
>
> In the end, though, my wildlife eco friend just loves dogs and hates cats. 8^D My guess is his cognitive structure is more dog-like and mine is more cat-like, after decades of being programmed by our pets.
>
>
> [‡] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/asian-giant-murder-hornets-new-map-habitat-united-states
>
> On 8/24/21 4:39 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> My first reaction to the subject line is one of my favorite parody
>> attributions to redneck culture:  "it's Diffr'nt, kill it!" but then I
>> read the content and realized it was more apropos than I expected.    
>>
>> I believe that something like "xenophobia" is an adaptive response in
>> many contexts...  we have some pretty deep instincts it seems that let
>> us know to be "askeered" of "spiders and snakes" even if we'd never seen
>> another ape respond that way.  My dog has always been very (properly)
>> fearful of snakes...  otherwise her natural curious aggression would
>> have had her dead-by-snakebite long ago...   she went crazy everytime
>> she saw a rattlesnake but always barked crazily from a good 6-10 feet
>> away.   She never alerted to a non-rattler that I knew of.    And in the
>> arms race of survival, it is natural that some "skeery" things will
>> camoflauge as benign or friendly or cute. 
>>
>> I am always a little nervous when large movements (especially gubbm'nt
>> supported ) try to tap those instincts.  It seems like a bad precedent
>> to encourage formalized xenophobia even against helpless insects.   The
>> Charlottesville (and too many other) white-nationalists chanting "jews
>> will not replace us" and all of Trump's fear-mongering are obvious (and
>> ugly), but aspects of the B(lack) L(ives) M(atter) movement that perhaps
>> overstated police culpability (in general not in specific cases), and
>> Hillary's unfortunate election-forfieting statement calling Trump
>> supporters "deplorables" (plenty of them were, but the brush was too
>> broad and there was probably at least some backlash turnout over that
>> one).  Her "superpredator" comments, etc. in the 90's are another
>> example.  
>>
>> As for me, I have a nicely expanding set of stands of what is know
>> locally as "Guaco" (critical to the black on black pottery process) in
>> the pueblo nearby but more commonly known as "beeweed" among anglos...
>> it turns out to be a particularly attractive nectar source for the
>> Tarantula Hawk (or Tarantula Wasp), a big ole blue-black  beast that
>> looks like it could stun you with a sting and drag you to it's
>> underground lair where it would insert it's fertilized eggs into your
>> abdomen to hatch and thrive until the larva are ready to emerge and
>> pupate ultimately into more giant scary wasps.   The thing is, this is
>> exactly what they do, but only with Tarantulae (and perhaps other large
>> spiders?) but can hardly be induced to sting anything else (I think
>> there is a YouTube Steve-Irwin wannabe who succeeded in getting one to
>> sting him on camera, but while painful it was not acutely life or limb
>> threatening).  There are as many as a dozen or more of these wasps (and
>> occasionally a few other pollinating insects) hanging around them.   I
>> approach them relatively casually but even when I drive up within a few
>> feet on my way into the driveway or run my weedwhip into the ragweed
>> surrounding the stand, they take no interest in  me.   I suppose if I
>> were to violently attack them, they *might* respond in some offensive
>> way, but most indications are, they reserve their sting for immobilizing
>> their Tarantula baby-incubators.   My immediate neighbors have lots of
>> loud yard-grooming equipment and a whole shed full of pesticides and
>> herbicides they run around  spraying on everything in their yard, and
>> while "beeweed" would never survive a week in their yard, I think they
>> would be out machine-gunning these elegant (though menacing looking)
>> wasps if they saw one.   FWIW I have not seen a Tarantula at this
>> location in the 2 decades I've lived her, I guess the wasps feed in my
>> yard and reproduce elsewhere.
>>
>> My bottom line is that xenophobia is first-order adaptive, but humans
>> need not be first-order (only) creatures.  We *can* think past our
>> initial reactions or herd-hysteria if we choose to.  Or not.
>