 Purred: Wed Jun 3, '09 11:24am PST |
 | |  | | Also...regarding the cat overpopulation problem...it has almost nothing to do with purebred cats. The problem is with ferals, "loosely owned" cats, and people who just don't bother to get Fluffy and Tigger fixed. The purebred cat population in the U.S. is estimated at less than 5%; and most breeders nowadays sell cats that are already desexed, or refuse to hand over the pedigree until the new owner proves that the cat has been spayed/neutered. If you pay close to $1000 for a purebred cat, you're unlikely to let it roam the neighborhood in an intact state, risking cat fights, FIV, FeLV, and unwanted pregnancies by Mr. Tabby next door.
Cat overpopulation is a big topic on Catster. Many Catster members are vet techs or volunteers in shelters (and, I suspect, some actual vets as well). If these people say that there is a cat overpopulation problem, then it must be true. Certainly an obscene number of cats get euthanized every day at shelters (the same goes for Japan, which is still rather behind the times in that most shelters are kill-kill shelters--find Fluffy within three days, or she gets gassed to death).
However...there is a curious dearth of information regarding cat overpopulation and euthanization on the Internet. I'm referring to actual statistics here. I haven't spent hours researching this, but the single site that I've found that actually gave numerical statistics said that the spay/neuter movement in the U.S. only got moving in the 1970's, and that since then, the cat overpopulation situation has improved, and the number of euthanized cats has decreased.
What I want is facts. I'm willing to believe whatever is supported by actual data, but, as I have written above, there is a curious lack of such data available on the Internet. Cries about the fate of homeless/soon to be euthanized kitties are rampant, but we would like to know the actual numerical statistics regarding kitty overpopulation now and in the past. Not that we want to deny the veracity of these statistics--we are seriously concerned about this problem, but at the same time, we wonder if the situation might have actually improved since the past. Without numerical data, we are unable to judge the problem in a logical way.
Personally, I suspect that in the days before spay/neuter became the norm, when Fluffy had a litter, one or two kittens would be left behind, and in the dead of night, Daddy would put the other kittens in a sack and throw it in the nearest body of water. That was the solution to cat overpopulation in the "good old days." Now we have shelters that are filled to the gills with cats who need homes, but that's partly because Daddy is not so sanguine about killing kittens as in the past. (Check out Robert Lowell's biography; when he divorced Jean Stafford, he put their three red tabbies in a sack and drowned them in a lake. I have a personal reason for disliking Robert Lowell--he ruined the life of a friend of mine--but I think his way of disposing of the kittens was not so unusual for the time.)
Breeders--at the very least hobby breeders--are the smallest contributors to the cat overpopulation problem. Ferals, loosely owned cats, cats whose owners just never getting around to "fixing" Fluffy or Tigger--these kinds of cats are the ones who end up in shelters. What to do? Feral colonies have their proponents; TNR is about the only thing you can do for them. Loosely owned cats? If Fluffy comes to your door every day at mealtime, you should take the responsibility to desex her--and Tigger too. As for people who have kitties at home that they've never gotten around to fix (whether because of money problems or the idea that desexing a cat is "unnatural"), they should be educated and led to cheap spay/neuter options.
I continue to want actual statistics about cat overpopulation. I don't doubt that it exists, but I'm curious about how it was dealt with in the past, and things like the number of homeless cats in the States. As a conclusion, however, I can guarantee that the breeding of pedigreed cats has practically NO influence on cat overpopulation. Rather than criticizing breeders, a truly concerned cat lover should find ways to decrease feral colonies, convince people that loosely owned cats are potential fodder for shelters and should therefore take measures to make sure that that does not happen, and also--perhaps the most important point--convince people with limited economic means that they should and and can get their cats desexed cheaply and easily. |  |  | |  |
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