TelBoy

So you let any person roam through your garden, juan, seeing how therapeutic it is?

Bob, i do accept it. I have to. I can't reverse people's decision to attempt to domesticate cats. All i'm saying is that it isn't just a one-way street with them - some people don't appreciate them, but can do nothing about it short of extreme measures.

OllyK

Never found Fox crap in my garden, because the garden is secure enough to stop the dog getting out, and in turn a fox getting in. As most birds are vegetarian, I think you will find that bird guano is in general not that much of a health risk. Meat eaters waste is far more harmful, that's why chicken dung and horse dung is good to put on the garden but you don't see bags of Cat Crap on the shelves of B&Q.

Funnily enough, so do most puppies, they get used to it through a thing called "training".

Some species of which are endangered

As do cats, so should we be sending out things to hunt the cats down as well?

WTF??? And Japanese Towsers etc attack kids if not trained properly, but hey that's what they do, no big deal??? Because "its what they do" makes it acceptable does it???

So do dogs...

Excersise, yes, but it does not "NEED" to hunt if it is well fed, they don't eat their kills for the most part, it is just killing because they can.

Finally, 1 responsible cat owner.

Let a dog off the lead when there is a rabbit or cat loose and I can pretty much guarentee the dog will go hunting. I know damn well my dog would kill a cat if it was given the chance, however, I keep the dog on a lead so the free roaming cats round our way don't get shredded.

So why not have a Deer or a Fox then?? If it is wild and not domesticated then surely it is cruel to have it in any form of captivity???

And dogs are by nature pack hunters but will scavenge if they are own their own, and they can survive quite nicely - what's your point?

Just because you can't be bothered to spend the time training the cat to accept a lead (for goodness sake we even trained the g/f's rabbit to walk on a lead, if a rabbit can learn, I am damn sure a cat can) or to provide for it in such a manner that it can excersise without affecting other people does not mean that rest of us should have to live with it.

juan

I was excluding humans from that actually, as I'm sure you picked up on.
As a race we can impose our own laws on each other but sometimes imposing them on other creatures shouldn't be our right.

K9VYN

then isn't that actually the point - not so much that cats are then enemy full stop, but they are as much a problem to some as a dog/fox/bird/rat etc might be to someone else.

we are all quick to generalise when something causes us an issue without considering that something that is non-problematic to us could be an issue to someone else! i sincerely hope my cats don't cause people to get as upset as some people on this board.

in the cat's defense, i would argue that many parents don't stop their teenagers from smashing windows/bus shelters, defacing signs, stealing cars, being genrally abusive, dropping litter, making racist comments, spawning more children and brining them up in exactly the same way etc - how is this more socially acceptable behaviour than a cat's?

juan

OllyK I think you will find that bird faeces is pretty potent, probably more so than a cat.

It has been proved that it contains a number of very harmful pathogens that can be transmitted to man.

Jye

How amazingly stupid Olly. You might as well compare a cat to a tortoise m8. And you talk about my arguement being full of holes!!!!!! ROFPML

TelBoy

It isn't K9VYN, but drawing this sort of comparison is meaningless, in my opinion. There's no Cat Prison is there? That's the point - we're totally at the mercy of the cat owners who, at the end of the day, can just say "Tough". And generally, they do. Because they can.

Jye

Just leave it on your car paintwork for more than 2 seconds to test that theory

MooseRacer

This is hilarious

juan

As for training a cat to be llike a dog, whats the point. Why try and break an animals spirit. That is a VERY selfish attitude.
Might just as well get a dog


A cat is a free spirit and it can choose to co-habit with you. It can look after itself. Its life doesn't revolve around you and it doesn't need to have you in visual contact 24 hours a day to be happy. Why try to make it something its not? Typical selfish human attitude

OllyK

It is not an major issue to train a cat to walk on a lead if you start when it is a kitten.

juan

Man you just don't get it

So we should try and screw up another species just because you found some unknown turd in your garden and you can't deal with it.

OllyK

That's nothing to do with the bacteria and other pathogens in it

K9VYN

fair comment! and i wasn't particularly aiming at you, just you made a point i wanted to pick up on.

but what i am saying is that i find problem teenagers an annoyance/issue which IMO the government/parents don't or haven't dealt with in the same way that cat owners (myself included) may, and not deliberately of course, contribute to your annoyance.

i'm just trying to see where there is a greater point to this thread, other than a rant because a cat(s) keeps depositing in some gardens. unpleasant as it may be (and i'm sure lots of us have to deal with it) there's is little we can do to please all parties.

Jye

On the cat fouling and owner responsibility front, I'd be happy to lay down a challenge to both ajm and OllyK.

I will go for a walk and take pictures of dog ****e and stray dogs in my local area. You both can go and look in your gardens for cat crap (as this seems to be where all the cat ****e in the world lives), and dead birds and all these dead 'nearly extinct' voles, and we will host the proof on photobucket tommorow. I bet I can get at least 20 stray dogs and their corresponding **** from any one housing scheme alone.

Q all the 'its only chav dog owners who let their animals do that', comments LOL

ajm

Right, a good time to answer off a few points:-

1) If an animal cannot be confined to your own house and grounds then it is not a suitable pet. The very fact that you are not in control of the animal is stretching the definition of a pet.

2) Many people do keep cats under control/indoors. If you can't then you shouldn't be keeping one as a pet.

3) With regard to our various gripes, the fact that some of you don't have a problem is irrelevent to those of us who do! It doesn't negate the fact that a problem exists. Your actions are causing people material loss, we have a right to live without your actions causing us material loss.

4) Arguing about damage caused by indigenous wildlife is irelevent. We have to put up with that because it doesn't happen through the direct actions of another person.

Jye

Never said it was. Please provide statistics and facts re the number of humans infected by cat ****e in the UK every year.

Perhaps you could then pass the info onto ajm for his thesis

juan

If thats your definition of not much of a health risk then what do you deem to be present in cat poo to be such a ghastly problem? some kind of radioactive material?

Redkop

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajm

I would like to add that the proposed law would include clarification of the term domestic pet when applied to cats, ie. it should be classified as a domestic pet and controlled as such otherwise it would constitute a non indigenous animal that has been released to roam which is already illegal.

I presume, by you feeling so strongly about this, that you have already contacted your local MP to bring this up in the House or started a National lobby/petition maybe?

And as for those that say that owners should clear up after their cat....

Yeah, I can really see my non-cat owning neighbours allowing me into their garden, armed with a shovel and digging up borders to see if my cat has shat in them. Assuming that it’s my cat of course, or should they allow, all the cat owners in my road access into their gardens too?

OllyK

Can you site your source please. So far all I have been able to find is:
1) risk of salmonella - only felt to be an issue if they crap in water tanks in sufficient quantity.
2) Aspergillus spp Spores - commonly found in our domestic environment and they are not considered to present an unacceptable risk
3) Also they can, in domestic situation pick up some human infections and then pass them back to the owner, but this is not a likelyhood with wild birds.

In comparison to a parasite that affects brain function, I am not seeing too much of a risk here.

TelBoy

Pretty much just a rant, because it's one of the few effects on my property over which i have little or no control, and therefore something i find quite frustrating.

ajm

Jye,

Dog faeces seems more prevalent that cat's because dogs are controlled within certain areas. It is therefore likely that their excrement will lie around those areas (pavements etc.). I agree that it is not pleasant, but it isn't relevant to the arguement against cats. There are 10 million odd cats in the UK and they must be pooing somewhere! If its not along pavements then it must be on private property, hence this discussion!

Jye

A horse, they are always getting in 'my road', hehe

You can but it's cruel to the animal and its natural instincts to roam freely. Just as it is to keep dogs locked up. Yawn weve been here before me thinks.

Life is full of problems, live with it.

Yeah a bit like the old fox hunting debate. Yawn.

juan

Who says? you?


These are the people who shouldn't be keeping one

What is your material loss?


The cat is free to go and live wherever it chooses. It is not 'owned' as such



What an absolute crock of the proverbial. I can't believe you can even wheel this stuff out and hope it to be taken seriously

OllyK

That's the point, you shouldn't need to look as your cat should never have been in their garden to take a crap in the first place.

GaryK

yep ive read some bollocks on here but this poll/thread takes the biscuit !

ajm

Then you shouldn't keep a cat full stop.

No, I shan't.

Completely unrelated. Tangential even!

juan

All this pent up rage!
Hope you make it back to the rational world soon.

Meantime just don't go checking your garden for mouse poo or you'll go over the edge.

Mice should really be confined to quarters and only allowed out on leads.

Heck actually lets just get rid of all animals except humans. Then the world will be just rosy and we will have completed our selfish destruction of what nature took millions of years to make.

ajm

To those who have turned up and just posted something like:

"This is bollox"

I'm afraid your opinion counts for nothing unless you can actually put together a comprehensive argument against the facts we have presented.

Those facts are:-

• Cats cause damage to property
• Cats cause damage to indigenous wildlife
• Cats present a health risk to humans

If you cannot put a case together against those facts then I'm afraid you are in way over your head in this thread.

MooseRacer

So cats can only crap on pavements or private property? LOL it gets better and better.