Kittens For Food?

[CottonMouth]

Just want to start by saying, this is NOT something I'd ever do or or recommend at all! I LOVE CATS! Just a discussion.

But little background info, was speaking with a few members at an Animal Rescue shelter and they were telling me how bad the cat population currently is and how they simply can't keep up with the amount of stray and abandoned cats. People are simply not getting their cats fixed and they are reproducing uncontrollably. Plus it's hard to find owners/buyers due to the fact sites like Kijiji and Craigslist people are simply giving them away for free.
One member joked that we might have to start feeding them to snakes. It was a joke but just got me thinking and thought it could be something to discuss.

One could argue, what makes a life of a cat more precious than a hamster, rat, rabbit...
And by doing it, you'd be feeding a snake and reducing the population of cats.

But what do you guys think, if a cat had the nutritional value and there was a population issue, could you do it?
Of course live is out of the question and that would be disgusting but as much as I want to say no, I think if a cat was humanly killed and you could buy them frozen that it would be something I'd consider because we definitely have a cat issue due to irresponsible owners.

Opinions?

[Sauzo]

If i had a snake big enough to eat a cat and it was FT, I would probably do it. I more or less view all that stuff as 'food' for a snake.

Now i wouldnt feed live not only for the fact they could hurt the snake but i dont think i could bring myself to do it just like I couldnt feed a live little rabbit. FT to me just looks like a lump of meat as i dont see it being all cute, just a frozen ball of fur that i thaw , rinse, fluff dry and feed. it's like how i couldnt kill a baby cow but i sure in heck could gobble down some yummy veal

Heck when i actually get around to getting my small chest freezer, I'll probably order some piglets from Monster Feeders for Caesar as a jumbo rat really isnt much to him anymore

[Phillydubs]

The real question is Mr cotton mouth..

how ow is black panther going to feel about you killing his cousins twice removed who are over running wakanda??? Lol

these animals are going to die anyway right? They would be euthanized and creamated??

to me why not give them some purpose as a good source.

If it works for rodents and other things to me it’s almost like creative recycling.

Do we just throw bottles in some landfill or do we find ways to reuse and make them

i never plan to own a snake large enough to consume a cat but I still think it’s ok

[bcr229]

I live next to thousands of acres of undeveloped (not even farmed) land so the coyotes and raptors / birds of prey keep the feral cat, and sometimes outdoor pet cat, population in check.

I wouldn't use euthanized cats as feeders. The feral ones probably have parasites and the pets may have been wormed or vaccinated recently.

[hilabeans]

Nope. Some lines just can't be crossed. I know the line can sometimes be blurry, but cats fall on the other side of that line for me.

We humans are capable of finding better solutions to overpopulation.

[zina10]

Everything that hilabeans and bcr229 said.

On top of that, do we really need more bad press? It doesn't matter if its fair or right, reptile keepers are constantly under attack of more rules and laws to have our hobby taken away from us. The last thing we need is to give people more ammunition.

Live cats could seriously damage any snake, even a large one. Their bites are deep punctures that almost always get infected and their claws can do quite a bit of slicing. Feral and abandoned cats are also not well taken care off usually and carry a large parasite load.

Why take the risk?

Former pet cats that WERE well taken care off either have a lot of meds in their system (some take a very long time to completely get metabolized) and they are still posing a danger from injuries plus how were they put down? Euthanized makes them unsafe to feed off. And I'm not even going to go there with pre killing a cat to make them safe for snakes.

Cats are beloved companion animals that get very attached to human beings. I never could/would do it and the backlash this would create on our hobby would be insane.

[RickyNY]

Just want to start by saying, this is NOT something I'd ever do or or recommend at all! I LOVE CATS! Just a discussion.

But little background info, was speaking with a few members at an Animal Rescue shelter and they were telling me how bad the cat population currently is and how they simply can't keep up with the amount of stray and abandoned cats. People are simply not getting their cats fixed and they are reproducing uncontrollably. Plus it's hard to find owners/buyers due to the fact sites like Kijiji and Craigslist people are simply giving them away for free.
One member joked that we might have to start feeding them to snakes. It was a joke but just got me thinking and thought it could be something to discuss.

One could argue, what makes a life of a cat more precious than a hamster, rat, rabbit...
And by doing it, you'd be feeding a snake and reducing the population of cats.

But what do you guys think, if a cat had the nutritional value and there was a population issue, could you do it?
Of course live is out of the question and that would be disgusting but as much as I want to say no, I think if a cat was humanly killed and you could buy them frozen that it would be something I'd consider because we definitely have a cat issue due to irresponsible owners.

Opinions?

What the people of Wakanda need is a Chinese Restaurant. Cat population problem mysteriously goes away .

[Bogertophis]

Hats off to CottonMouth for a wonderfully courageous topic! In the larger scheme of things, it makes total sense...the planet is getting more
crowded every day and we simply must recycle & do all we can to preserve the natural world.

But as bcr229 said, the parasite load or the medications they've had would render them unsafe to use, not to mention that other pathogens
carried or the basic nutritional balance might be off as well. And zina10 is spot-on about the backlash it would create, as far more people like
cats than snakes, fair or not.

Kept as pets, cats are charming...but the unhappy truth is that more & more cats are feral, & people simply MUST stop looking the other way.
There is nothing cute about feral cats: they decimate natural populations of birds, reptiles & small mammals, they spread diseases & parasites
to us* & to our pets. (*I do organic gardening & roaming TRESPASSING cats see that as their cat box, which CAN harm human health, not to
mention my property rights...) What would your neighbors say if you sent your dogs or other pets to mess up their yard & kill animals for fun?

The feral cat population isn't getting any better, thanks to all the sympathetic cat-fools who continue to FEED them. The problem is that cats
on the loose are so ubiquitous that it's hard to get people to even realize (or admit) they are NOT native predators! When I used to live in the
desert, the coyotes were ever so grateful to those who let their pets roam, but that is not the answer in most areas, where coyotes themselves
are often killed deliberately, if they exist at all.

Our society is poorly educated & it only seems to be getting worse: we know that giant pythons don't belong in the Everglades & some take
extraordinary delight in hunting them down & killing them, but there is a HUGE blind spot to roaming & multiplying cats; cat-lovers seem to think
the animal they fancy should have free-reign...that the world is their "oyster"? But this is NOT 50 or 75 years ago, where more families lived on
farms with a cat or two in the barn...we're all living closer together, & our wild population of birds, reptiles & small mammals is struggling to
survive in what little space we leave them...AND with a warming climate.

We must do better to educate & control populations where needed. The natural world has a balance of predators & prey, but humans have messed
that up by releasing cats everywhere. The truly feral ones don't have a good life, and those roaming pets mistaken for ferals are being killed too...
by cars, by diseases, by canines both wild & domestic, and deliberately by some people. If you love your cat (or dog), do NOT let them roam. If
you have a pet, be responsible....spay/neuter!

[enginee837]

Excellent solution for unwanted cats and dogs imo. Better than just euthanizing them and throwing them away. There is no line in the animal kingdom, all animals big and small carry the same value from a roach to a whale. The only true line lies between humans and everything else. So long as it is not endangered, go for it.

[Bogertophis]

...Cats are beloved companion animals that get very attached to human beings....

Yes, they seem to be...but they also have survival instincts. I was once told privately by a police officer that ever since the call he went on where a recently
deceased woman was being consumed by her lovely cat, let's just say that he no longer swerves when they run across the road in front of him. He said there
have been other such incidences in his experience as well.

Please understand that I'm not repeating this to be gross or unkind...I just think we need to be more objective about this issue...see cats as they really are,
not as we imagine them to be.

There have been studies with tiny cameras on cat collars that revealed those sweet pet cats did FAR more killing when loose than their owners EVER imagined.
Contrary to what many thought, cats only bring home a tiny fraction of the animals they kill or maim when running loose. IS THAT FAIR??? NO.