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Watching cat bylaw unfold fascinating

April 16, 2008 14:04

To the editor: I have watched with interest, while the cat fight unfolds on the pages of your newspaper each week; from the announcement of the proposed new outdoor cat bylaw, to every angry letter to the editor in opposition to the bylaw; to the final announcement in an article in Saturday’s paper that the “tough new bylaw” had been passed. With the exception of the excellent cartoon on Page 4 of your Saturday, May 7 newspaper, I haven’t seen any indication of how the other side feels. So, with the understanding that I think cats are beautiful creatures and I admire them, and that I am not speaking against them, but I am speaking against what they do. Our neighbourhood is full of cats - white cats, black cats, dark gray-striped cats, and brown and white cats, and they roam freely throughout the day and night. One of your readers states that cats don’t leave their droppings; they bury them. You’re darned right they do - right in the middle of my newly-planted garden, three days in a row. This happens year after year in our yard, which is fully fenced. One of our neighbours got so fed up cleaning up ‘cat buryings’ out of their garden every year that they finally gave up and refused to plant a garden at all. Another reader suggests that we chase cats with a broom when they are disturbing our gardens. Since cats are mostly nocturnal, and they ‘do the deed’ in the middle of the night, we don’t even get the chance to wield a broom. Another reader suggests that cats having to wear a collar could get them strangled by a branch if they had to run up a tree to escape a dog on the loose. I guess the cat wearing a pink or blue flea collar (one week pink, the next week blue) that showed up week after week to lie in wait near our birdfeeder, didn’t know it was in danger of being strangled, at least not by catching it’s collar in a branch. We have had a birdfeeder for years and enjoy watching all the different birds that come to feed. But by the simple act of trying to help our feathered friends, we feel that we are leading them to the slaughter; serving them up on a platter, so to speak. They are a free lunch for any cat who will wait patiently, and they do, until they catch one. On garbage pick-up morning, there is one cat that systematically checks every garbage bag, all up and down the street, and if it finds something nice and smelly, it rips the bag open to get at it. We have watched it do this many times, and you thought it was the seagulls, didn’t you? No, they come later and finish the job. In spite of the reader who calls this bylaw “stupid and nonsensical,” I believe it has been a long-time coming, and I commend council for carrying through with it. It’s unfortunate if it causes hardship for some cat owners, but if, as they say, it encourages responsible pet ownership, then it has achieved its purpose. Dog owners have had to do it for years. Betty Gleeson Parry Sound

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