Unaware they were being recorded, elected leaders in a small Texas city let their imaginations run wild in a closed-door meeting about dealing with feral cat colonies.
One proposed mass poisoning to take out as many as 50 cats at a time. Another, perhaps fancying himself a mafia hit man, envisioned taking care of the city’s cat “problem” execution-style with a “.22 round to the back of the head.”
A third proposed dumping the bodies of the dead cats in an area the city already uses to dispose of unwanted animals.
“We have a location on this property that’s called deer heaven,” the committee member told colleagues at the Nov. 6 meeting. “I’m sure it could be kitty cat heaven too.”
Now the city council and wildlife advisory council of Granite Shoals, a city of about 5,100 in central Texas, are trying to explain themselves to an infuriated public, the local Humane Society and their own police, who rebuked them in a public statement that asserted their plans are illegal.
State and local laws “do not allow any cruelty to animals, including feral cats in our community,” police chief John Ortis wrote in a letter to the public.
The Hill Country Humane Society took the extraordinary step of “terminating its relationship” with the city, calling the committee’s plans “blatantly unethical and illegal” in a statement posted on Facebook.
“This recording reveals that not only was there an attempt to develop a plan to inhumanely shoot captured cats and dispose of their carcasses, but there was open discussion between members of the committee and the City Manager about the need to conceal such activities from the general public,” the Humane Society wrote.
Staff at the Humane Society said they’ll still take in stray cats from the city, but they’ve ended their official partnership.
Todd Holland, the committee chair, denied that his members wanted to keep details of their plans from the public and told local newspaper the Daily Trib that the committee was merely trying to work out the “intricate details” of how to handle a population of about 400 cats. It’s not clear how the city arrived at that number, and there’s been no mention of an official effort to get an accurate tally.
“It’s not like we’re a bunch of cowboys running wild,” Holland said.
But in the recording, committee members clearly discussed hiding details from the public, and the Daily Trib noted that the committee used the word “remove” interchangeably with “euthanize” in written materials detailing the plan, perhaps to soften the language or obscure the fact that the proposed solution was to kill the cats.
Granite Shoals Mayor Ron Munos called the recording “disturbing” and said the committee’s plan will not be put into practice.
“The city is not doing this,” he told the Daily Trib. “We’re not going out and killing cats.”
Here at PITB we feel like a broken record regularly referring back to the junk studies blaming cats for killing billions of birds annually, but the reason we do is because those studies have real-life consequences.
Ill-advised, unethical and illegal plans to eradicate stray cats wouldn’t be explored at municipal and county levels if elected leaders weren’t told that trap, neuter, return (TNR) programs do not work and that outdoor cats pose the most significant thread to local wildlife.
Likewise, we wouldn’t hear about schools sponsoring cat hunts for children or so-called conservationists gunning down entire stray colonies if a small but vocal group of ostensible scientists weren’t routinely publishing dubious studies making improbable and unsupportable claims about feline predatory impact.
In plain terms there’s been a concerted effort to paint domestic cats as dangerous, ruthless killing machines, the media hasn’t treated the claims with skepticism, and the result is a whole lot of cruelty and misery inflicted on innocent animals.
City councils, wildlife biologists, park rangers and others are not armed with the facts when they rely on those studies, and the result is bad policy and decision-making.
Stories like this one out of Texas have become more frequent over the past few years, and we suspect things will get a lot worse for cats without injecting some much-needed sanity and evidence-based solutions to counter the tidal wave of misinformation.
Pain In The Bud 
This is Texas. No shock here.
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I hate reading stories like this. Doesn’t surprise me at all that it took place in TX. Did they get rid of everyone on that board?
Ok, here’s what I don’t understand. You have told us many times about how the data being put out about cats killing birds, etc. is crap, you showed us the sources and you found it all on the web, right? So why is it that people like these, the people that make these decisions, aren’t going online and finding the same information that you did? Does no one in that town/on that board have a working braincell? It can’t be that hard. I mean, if I were to contemplate killing animals (which I would NEVER do!), I’d want to look at/study as much data as I could find, both good and bad on the subject and then make a truly informed decision. Wouldn’t you?
How do these morons even get elected? Oh wait. I already KNOW the answer to that question. 🙄
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Most people believe what they want to believe and ignore everything to the contrary, so in that respect I don’t think this issue is that much different than issues like climate change, gun control, etc. The issue itself — in this case the slaughter of cats — gets abstracted by the argument.
The “studies” are published in academic journals, whose editors should be mortified, and reported on breathlessly by a media that has been purged of most of its professionals. I would be very surprised if anyone besides veteran science journalists actually read the studies before reporting on them.
But I do need to emphasize that it’s not just me criticizing those studies. They have been roundly condemned by other scientists, the SPCA and the Humane Society.
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What a horrible bunch of people! At least their plans appear to be scuttled now. Still, I’d like to see these committee members removed from office in disgrace.
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I agree with you totally – junk science, it’s always been easy in any ‘science’ to blame the voiceless, look like an expert and get paid for it. Always distresses me how an awful lot of Humans regard the murder of our fellow earthlings as the answer to everything
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The more a lie is told, the more people believe it, until it becomes an unassailable ‘truth.’
Like ‘Edison was the most brilliant scientist in US history,’ when the truth is a lot of what he ‘invented,’ was stolen from other scientists. Mother Teresa was a ‘saint,’who we should all aspire to be like, when there is abundant proof that she was nothing of the kind.
The animal welfare movement really needs to step up with the TRUTH that the loss of bird populations pretty much has zilch to do with cats.
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That is beyond horrible and I hope their discussions being exposed ushers in some consequences for them.
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I just could not bring myself to read this…
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I’ve been steaming about a recent study and the way it’s been portrayed in media … And will mention in a post soon if I can. You are absolutely right, these so-called studies influence those who don’t know that there are good studies and bad studies. But the general public doesn’t know this. One thing to remember is that in Texas, it looks the local people are raising a fuss about this. And they could really use the support of people in other areas when these things happen. For instance I was so grateful when national groups came to help protest the arrest of the ladies feeding ferals in Wetumka, AL.
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Let’s come up with a plan for getting the truth out to the public.
We talk about disputing this bogus “science”; now let’s figure out how to do it.
Have a TED Talk?
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Well first I’d say don’t take my word for it, read the studies. Peter Marra, author of Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer, is the lead or co-author on almost all of them, and the first major one is from 2013 IIRC, although you’ll want to double check that.
When I say the “studies” (meta-analyses) wouldn’t meet the standards of an undergraduate-level hard sciences class, I’m not exaggerating. I don’t know how they can admit that they might be off on the US cat population by as much as 100 million and still make the claims they’ve made without being absolutely mortified.
But in addition to that, most of the sources they use have nothing to do with feline predatory habits, and some of them are surveys of self-selected participants asking them to estimate how many birds they *think* their cats might kill when they’re outdoors. Think about that: They took the results of online surveys that asked people to guess the frequency of something they do not observe, and used that “data” to support their conclusions.
It’s not science, it’s noise, and it’s spectacularly lazy.
So please, look at the studies and read the responses by other scientists and groups like the Humane Society.
There was a particularly scathing response by a group of scientists who criticized the study methods in-depth, published in one of the academic community conversation sites. I can’t remember the names of the authors but I’ll find it and post it. The authors of the cat predatory studies responded by comparing them to climate change deniers, a neat little smear that distracts from the issue.
One thing I’ve found to be true: A lot of people do not want to hear about this stuff, even people who love cats. They want cute little adoption stories and feel-good content. Covering this stuff does not make me popular with anyone and costs me readers, but thankfully it’s my site and I get to write about things that bother me as well as things I love. Besides, ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away…and all indications are that it’s going to get worse as the media continues to repeat the claims against cats as fact.
Just a short heads up: I know regular PITB readers don’t need to hear this, but people passing by might. We gain nothing by being rude, threatening or otherwise hostile to the academics involved in these studies. Please refrain from personal insults and please don’t email them to argue. The aim here is to educate, not give ammunition to critics who say feline welfare advocates are crazy.
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Yes, yes, yes, I know the studies.
You didn’t answer my suggestion, though. How can we come up with a way to get this out for people to know about it?
I agree that attacking the “researchers” isn’t going to get us anywhere but nothing I said implied that we were going to.
I agree that people want to hear feel-good stories. You are an excellent writer. I have faith that between us, you and your followers can invent a way to make it palatable. I am reputed to be a good writer myself. We can do this!
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I think you’re giving me too much credit. Capable writer, yes, but terrible self-promoter and marketer.
We might have luck working with one of the non-profits that lobbies against cruelty to cats, declawing, etc. I have had mixed experiences with those groups.
The thing is, some of them have been very vocal about this and it hasn’t made a difference.
One of the biggest problems is that media has contracted so much in recent years, and thousands of trained journalists have been laid off and replaced with web writers who pump out quick, low quality content.
It’s possible that maybe some established science writers would be sympathetic if they can be persuaded to read the studies and they see how sloppy they are.
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Buddy, you have more followers than you are giving yourself credit for. I’m not asking you to do this alone.
We could work with established groups or we can organize one of our own.
Yes, they have been ignored when they complained about this, but the thing about speaking up is that it snowballs. Instead of folding our power into another group, we need to swell the chorus.
Please read John Stuart Mill’s Essay on Liberty.
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If there are people to work with, I will work with them. But this is like a hydra. Two days ago the New Yorker published a story by Jonathan Franzen, the novelist, birder and hipster, that went on for some ten thousand words about how delusional TNR volunteers and cat advocacy organizations are, and some 60 paragraphs (!) down finally gets to the point I knew he was angling toward: The Peter Marra studies.
Franzen said he was comfortable with the “science” behind the studies, dismissed studies about TNR as unscientific, and did his own back of the napkin calculations to claim cats kill twice as many birds annually in the US as actually exist, arguing that cat predatory impact keeps birds at replacement level populations.
It took me hours just to read through all that nonsense and the studies he was citing, and I started a draft but it’s Christmas and I had obligations.
If I go ahead and publish without taking a hard look at all that stuff, I risk being wrong, looking like an idiot and damaging the cause I’m trying to promote.
Also, keep in mind this stuff takes time. The story I did about the wildlife biologist in California — the guy who was shooting cats at night to “protect” birds — took three months to do, between poring through an enormous cache of records, sorting the relevant bits, doing follow-up reporting, going line by line to make sure it was airtight, adding relevant documents and audio clips to the story, etc. It was monumental, and I had a lot of help from a concerned cat advocate.
That is the sort of thing that a newsroom normally hands to an experienced investigative reporter and pulls them off beat for months to get it done.
On top of that, when it’s done in a newsroom, the newspaper is a powerful institution with attorneys on retainer, and they do their own review. I’m doing this as a blogger without the backing of an institution, so I am exposed. If I get things wrong, there could be serious consequences, so I have to be very careful.
So all this is to say that I can’t move at the pace some would like.
I’ll tell you what I’d love: Help from an attorney who specializes in First Amendment issues, libel, media and that sort of thing, to make sure I am in the clear with my stories. That, and grants for investigative reporters to do this kind of work. There’s gotta be someone out there with resources who would like to see more journalism instead of the SEO-happy “Look at this video of cute kittens!” stuff. We all love cute kittens, of course, but ignoring the plight of unfortunate cats doesn’t solve the problem.
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The ugly TRUTH must be told. And the disgusting thing about this? Couple i worked for had to move to move Texas for thier jobs about 20 years ago. They told me shooting feral, and stray dogs are NOT done in secret. No one was going to call police on thier neighbors. Most farm and property owners think they are vermin and shoot them. In Brooklyn they never let thier cats out in garden and are super careful not to have any cat escape house by accident.
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Here is one animal rescuer I follow. He lives in a small village in Morocco and he has been saving puppies and kittens for years. For a long time, there was no veterinarian in his village, but eventually they got one:
https://youtube.com/@Pets_Are_Angels?si=VvJCaDSC-U41RNE0
Please read his post on December 23, 2023. His village grocery store finally started to stock pet food. For years, he was rescuing abandoned pets and people made fun of him. Now, so many people have seen his tireless efforts that they are starting to feed stray animals too, and they asked the grocery store to stock pet food too.
I am sending this to you so you can see that one person’s thankless efforts can bear fruit.
I also support Takis Shelter in Crete, Greece. Takis had a lot of money but he went bankrupt saving abandoned dogs in Crete. People made fun of him for years and he lived in a shipping container. Now he is famous and gets support from people around the world. He currently has about 400 dogs in his shelter, along with cats, goats and other animals. Look him up on YouTube or Facebook.
I get Social Security and Disability checks and I can still find a few dollars to send to Takis.
This is why I believe that you can accomplish miracles if you want to.
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