April 13, 2005

Don't mock our cat-shooting ways!

This vote to permit shooting feral cats has brought Wisconsin a lot of attention. And now Governor Doyle is responding to the cat-loving constituents:
Governor Jim Doyle says "everybody is kind of laughing" at his state right now — over a proposal to legalize the killing of feral cats.

The proposal was adopted Monday at meetings of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress — a public advisory group. It classifies wild, free-roaming cats as an unprotected species that kills songbirds and other wildlife.

"I don't think Wisconsin should become known as a state where we shoot cats," said Doyle, a Democrat who neither hunts nor owns a cat.
There's still a legislative step. I'm betting the cats win in the end. The birds are just going to have to deal with their sorry lot in life. You're prey! Get used to it!

9 comments:

Pancho said...

I have this very evening put 3 neighborhood cats on the Greyhound Bus bound for Cheboygan.

Faithful Progressive said...

Even though I'm allergic to cats and consider them a sort of biological enemy, and even though I love birds above most creatures--I think this is truly one of the stupidist ideas to come out of our state since Joe McCarthy learned to count.

-FP
PS
What's this, comments on Althouse? I thought there only function was for liberals to fight with each other, while modeate conservatives stayed high above the fray on Bascom Hill?

Faithful Progressive said...

That would be 'their' only function...

Ann Althouse said...

Faithful: check out my post from last weekend explaining why I was reactivating comments. Judge Posner, who has them on his blog, inspired me. He's not liberal.

Richard Lawrence Cohen said...

O Wisconsin, art thou once again a source of mirth?

Ann Althouse said...

Richard, I was trying to think up a Wisconsin version of "Don't Mess With Texas," but the best I could come up with was a sort of weak internal near-rhyme: "Don't Scorn Wisconsin."

Sissy Willis said...

"The birds are just going to have to deal with their sorry lot in life. You're prey! Get used to it!" is worthy of a life-long person of the right, and I know you just came over to the dark side post 9/11. What it really comes down to is the tragic view of human nature vs the utopian.

This cat won't hunt

Ann Althouse said...

Sissy: I was being sarcastic, but if you want to take they whole prey thing seriously, we ought to get to shoot the cats, who are our prey. The cats are going to have to deal with it.

Anonymous said...

Here's a bit of wisdom in a poem written many long years ago. It applies exactly to our problem with feral cats in our ecology today.

A cat
She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone owned
Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime
And had her kittens duly drowned.
In Spring, nevertheless, this cat
Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,
And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,
As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails.
I loathed and hated her for this;
One speckle on a thrush’s breast
Was worth a million such; and yet
She lived long, till God gave her rest.

Edward Thomas
Born 1878, killed in the battle of Arras- Easter Monday, 9 April 1917