Think I finally got banned Over there!

Rally

NC Minnesota
Well, not to offend anyone, but, there are two sides to every story. Not sure about Pa. and the legal means to dispense of feral cats/ cats caught on property of other than owner, but many states require they be turned over to the local animal shelter. The burden of finding the owners is not a legal requirement for the landowner who catches cats, dogs, or domestic livestock, that is not wearing any type of identification. Most owners ear tag livestock, or put collars on dogs, that is quite rare for cats. Next time you pull into a barnyard full of cats, look to see how many are collared. There are Animal Damage Control trappers all over this country that have to deal with just situations daily. Different legal requirements vary by state, but most states have laws directed at such cases, and animals off leash/ property of the owner. Some states allow humane dispatch of said animals, and in the case of a domestic animal doing damage to domestic livestock/ pets, the owner can be held liable for damages. There are also laws as to means of dispatch, proper disposal, nowhere I'm aware of allows "fishing for Cats". In urban areas, where it is illegal to discharge a firearm, some states require CO2 chambers or lethal injections, both of which require certification and licensing within those jurisdictions.
I know some of you are cat owners, and I really don't mean to offend anyone here, but reality is, that when any animal leaves your property, it loses many of the protections it has and falls under laws addressing such situations. The best thing you can do for your pet is collar/ID your animal so that anyone having to deal with it, off your property, can contact you for a better outcome.
We have all read about the place where an old widow dies and the house was completely full of cats/ dogs and they had taken over the place. Somebody has to deal with those animals, and rarely are they ever going to be adopted. Adoption records at your local SPCA will confirm that, but rarely reported. Most often those animals end up free ranging and are dealt with by the local coyote/ wolf/ fox populations and the public is unaware they even exist. For many, the remainder of their lives is spent preying on the local small game/ bird population. There are studies out there confirming that and the number of small animals cats kill every year is staggering.
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
I have no problem with the humane disposal of feral cats, shot one myself many years ago while groundhog hunting with a colleague in Kentucky. The animal died quickly. And our cats are housecats, we live in an urban environment so they don't roam free. My farmer uncle used to keep cats around the barn to keep rats and other vermin controlled, he'd pour a little fresh milk in a trough for them in the morning after milking the cows but other than that he didn't pay much attention to them.

A while back a local bird-enamored resident of an adjacent community took a .22 and shot at her neighbor's cat. Unfortunately it missed the cat and ricocheted and hit and killed the neighbor who was working in her yard.

Haven't looked at numbers but I am always reading about dog packs, funny nobody calls them feral dogs like they do with feral cats. And of course coyotes kill everything.

There are always ways to do what might be needed without resorting to needless cruelty.
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
Keith,
You may have misunderstood my post. I wasn't condoning cruel means to control cats nor dogs. In Jim's post he referred to someone catching cats and surrendering them to the animal shelter for disposal. My point was that is probably his only recourse of dealing with them in his local, by law. Most cities have ordinances pertaining to such and the handling of those animals.
You are also correct about the ferrule dogs, which is what they are called in the circles I run in. It is common place for the ADC trappers to have to deal with them, for years after any natural disasters, like Katrina. There were lots of domestic pets fending for themselves, after being separated from their owners. I'm guessing at this point, the same thing happened after the fires in Ca. this past summer. Those pets that are collared/ ID', have a better chance of being returned to their owners, than their owners finding them, many of which end up at makeshift emergency shelters that have later identified/ advertised locations.
 
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KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
Rally, I don’t have any problem with people catching and turning in stray animals. I support our local no kill animal shelter, if people would turn in unwanted animals and not dump them in the country there would be a lot less feral critters out there causing problems for everybody.
 

smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
We have at least 2 neighborhood cats that like to use our back yard as their sandbox. I don't like cleaning up after them, but we also have a population of mice and rats in the neighborhood. Last I heard you're not likely to contract Hantavirus from cat droppings.
I'm fine with the kitties.
 
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Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I'm going to guess we have 7 or 8 barn cats. We have one that is a reliable mouser. None of them are willing to take on a healthy adult rat. In 25 years we had one cat that would tackle a rat willingly on a regular basis. OTOH, we have a Rat/Jack Russell Terrier, I'm still not clear on which he is. That dog is certain death on rats. Unfortunately, he is death on any cat, chicken, duck and probably new born lamb or kid too, so he's not running the place taking care of the rats. I would like to see the breed of cat that will take on an adult barn rat as a rule. They are few and far between in my experience. Song birds, baby cottontails and small snakes seem to be the average cats forte. I'm not a cat fan, but would certainly never resort to some of the cruel methods I've read about to control the feral population. A 22 and a mouse squeaker will take care of the issue without the sadistic undertones.
 

Intheshop

Banned
I was reading recently about a "stand",deer hunter who had his pet cat "trained"? well enough to hang out in his admittedly, "Hilton'esque" hunting arrangement.

Cats have better sense of sound and its direction over the traditional 4 legged hunting partner. He said it was pretty neat to see the cat light up to approaching deer.

So,wifey and I are sitting in a car awhile back. We were parked,behaving.... playing melenial fingering our phones.... in an old city neighborhood. Had to wait for one of the boys we were visiting to get there from work. I notice this bruiser tomcat coming down the sidewalk and could tell he was "the man" on that block,at least. He's moseying on when I told the wife....."watch this".

Thinking of deer stand boy ..... started a VERY faint,lip squeak. This is from inside a modern car with the windows up. At about 25 yds,and the cat couldn't really see us as we were parallel parked...... he not only heard the muffled squeak but,locked on our location in a fraction of a second. I did it a cpl more times,he got bored and moved on. Wife was impressed? I was shocked.
 

KeithB

Resident Half Fast Machinist
Read an article a while back about several cities using cats as "working" animals. They get strays, sterilize them, give them basic medical care, and release them in rat-infested areas. One comment from a worker at a food warehouse that had a severe rat problem - he said that within a week of releasing a bunch of fully-clawed cats they started finding horribly mangled rat bodies everywhere. No song birds or neighborhood rabbits were harmed.
 

JonB

Halcyon member
I have mentioned online somewhere? about my one time deer hunting "sitting style", with a local farm cat.

Disclaimer: I never did see a deer that day.

My Best friend's veggie farm, where I visit often, has some outside-only Farm cats. They have had about 20 or so, at any one time over the years (and usually 2 or 3 indoor-only cats), mostly the outside cats were not friendly to 'other' people who didn't live on the farm and feed them. But there is usually one or two that are friendly to 'some' others. Years back there was one that liked me quite a bit, her name was Grady and for a outside-only farm cat, it was incredible that she lived to about 20 years old and had so many litters, you couldn't even count them. Mostly the cats there, lived a short life (2 or 3 years) due to a busy county road nearby and a healthy raptor population.

I've Deer hunted that land several times in the late 1990s and early 2000s (that was before I learned I wasn't much of a hunter). One time, Grady wandered into the woods with me, so instead of going into my tree stand, I chose to sit on the ground with my friend. We were next to a tree, which I was leaning back on, we were on the side of a wooded hill, looking down.

As usual, it was so quiet, when there was a small noise, I'd look and see nothing. Honestly, I couldn't tell the exact direction that any noise was coming from, at that location. Maybe the sound was echoing?

One time when there was a noise, while I was looking at Grady and scratching her neck ...Her ears perked up, and like little radar dishes, they where pointing in a certain direction...so I looked in that direction, and sure enough, way off in the distance, there was a chipmunk scurrying around, far enough away that I could barely identify it.

That was the moment, I realized how neat it is to have a friendly cat hunting with me. That only happened one day, and never happened again, but what a small joy it was. I surely didn't train her and I was sure glad she wanted to hang out with me that day. Anyway, for the rest of that day, every time I heard a noise, I'd then look to her for the correct direction...and was amazed and impressed.

Photos from Last Christmas
9039

9040
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
I never call these kitties Feral: They are all named and all come to me by their names! They are just displaced! They can all be picked up and cuddled! If they need medical attention I go through channels to get it for them! They get 2 warm meals a day and dry food when they need it. When they are taken care of they are not so interested in birds and such but they do take care of the mice. This past winter they tried their paws at tukeys but that did not work!
9051
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
The rats here over the past 100+ years have tunneled under the barn floor so much that parts of it dip. I think some ferrets might work, but a cat isn't going under the floor and in the walls. Poison works great.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
you need a rat terrier once they start getting out of hand.
that and night vision for the pellet rifle.
 

Hawk

North Central Texas
I tried shooting rats with a pellet rifle once. After the first one that is shot squeaks, the parties over for several hours as they all scatter and hide.
 

david s

Well-Known Member
Time to be politically incorrect. Does any one else remember rat shooting at the dump? Line the cars up along the dumps edge, turn on the head lights and appreciate a 10/22. Of course its a land fill now. Still smells the same though.
 

Hawk

North Central Texas
That's what I was talking about on the previous post. We had a spot that had a bunch of 2 inch cast iron pipes that the rats lived in. They were everywhere. We could shoot as long as we made head shots and the rats were DRT. As soon as one got shot that had time to squeak, it was over, cause the rest would run and hide for a while.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I remember cutting school and driving about 100 miles to an old dump in the town where my mom grew up to shoot rats.
I got home and my dad asked if I had a good time out shooting...
uhh, yeah, so umm how did you know?
he was like,, I had a problem and needed your 22, it and your shotgun was gone when I opened the cabinet.
that was it.
I thought for sure I was gonna get a butt whipping, nope calm and cool.
now had I cut school and went over to my G/F's house or up town to goof off.
 

CZ93X62

Official forum enigma
I like cats. A lot. I'm not a humaniac, but I enjoy their presence and company. I like dogs just as much. Life would be a lot more bleak and colorless without these 2 animal species that decided thousands of years ago to join us at our campfires and enter into the rewarding symbiotic relationships we share with them.

That treble-hook bit still makes me mad as h--l. I have been obliged to shoot a few feral dogs over the years, but never a sick or bird-killing cat. I've never raised poultry, though--that might change my viewpoint. By CA law, cats are not considered "domestic" animals--all are considered feral, from the semi-wild barn cats on Marie's family farm to the most pampered urban apartment-dwelling house cat.
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Time to be politically incorrect. Does any one else remember rat shooting at the dump? Line the cars up along the dumps edge, turn on the head lights and appreciate a 10/22. Of course its a land fill now. Still smells the same though.

Funny you should mention that!
My Father-in-law and mother-in-law before being married; used to go to the local dump and shoot rats at dusk! Both used to share fond memories of that ( they called it "date night" !) It appears to me they has a great time! ( cheaper then a bar bill!)
I can't even remember how many times they told that story!
Jim