A.D.D.

It could soon be legal to shoot stray cats in Wisconsin. Woohoo! Lock 'N Load, lets string us up some kitties. This oughta be a hit among cat people. Cat people are funny in that they take any threat, sign of hostility, or joke directed at a cat completely personally. If you say cats smell bad, they act as if their own children have been insulted. If you say they should be hunted because they've amassed in large numbers and are threatening the ecosystem, they send you death threats. If these cats were on my land, eating my crops, and tearing up my irrigation lines, they'd be goners. These "feral" cats are often malnourished and skiddish of human beings. They have a hard time feeding themselves, and they don't posess the skills and opposable thumbs required to be successful in the workforce. If they were human beings, they could easily have fallen victim to their "right to die" by now. Wisconsin residents are ready to start controlling the populations with their 12 guages and .22's, but some have their reservations. Apparently the practice of cat hunting is inhumane. Who would have guessed. Many states have programs set up to kill all kinds of animals that are considered pests. These cats are obviously pests, or this debate wouldn't be held in the first place. It's the pet factor that is involved here. People think of their own little kitty and shudder at the thought of it being shot by some mean old hunter. Wisconsin isn't going to allow people to walk up and down the streets of Milwaukee, shooting at your pet cat. They're going to allow them to head out into the wilderness, and help control a feline overpopulation that is damaging the ecosystem. If these were squirrels, possums, or non-endangered rodents, there wouldn't be so much controversey. The only reason hunting cats is inhumane is because so many of them have names.

Update: Wisconsin's governor has rejected the idea of allowing hunters to kill stray cats. He apparently is afraid that the other states will make fun of Wisconsin if they allow this. I guess he heard one too many jokes about Minnesota and South Dakota allowing people to kill cat's because his official position is:

"What it does is sort of hold us up as a state that everybody is kind of laughing at right now."

That's good news for Wisconsin's estimated 2 million stray cats that wander the countryside, but bad news for the 47 million to 139 million songbirds eaten each year by these cats. Hey, but nobody is laughing at Wisconsin, and that's what is really important.