Antone Martinho-Truswell wants to get rid of every free-range cat in his native Australia and says “it’s time we outlawed pet cats” as well.
The University of Sydney academic, who styles himself as a zoologist and makes impossible claims about the number of animals supposedly killed by felines every year, doesn’t mince words when presenting his argument, which boils down to a logical fallacy. He says he’s an expert, he says cats must be driven to extinction, ergo it must happen.
“Your cat is a killer and it cannot be permitted to live here,” Martinho-Truswell said.
With rhetoric like that, and special interests groups claiming cats are the primary force behind the pending extinctions of native flora and fauna, it’s not a surprise when people think they should take the problem into their own hands. In Australia and New Zealand we’ve already seen vigilantes who fail at hiding their joy at killing felines, and now volunteers helping cats have to worry about their physical safety.
A colony manager and two other volunteers were feeding strays in western Sydney on April 17 when a man in a gold Nissan stopped and asked them if they were helping the cats.
When they said they were, the man became violent and attacked the colony manager, a 31-year-old woman, and a volunteer who tried to protect her, a 33-year-old man who was knocked unconscious by the suspect, police said. The man drove off before officers arrived.
The victims were treated at a local hospital. Police have a description of the suspect and a license plate number, according to local media in Sydney, but it isn’t clear if they know his identity.
A spokeswoman for the volunteer group, Community Helping Campbelltown Cats, told Sydney’s 9News that the resources the government makes available are “simply inadequate,” leaving volunteers to do the bulk of the work and fundraising for trap, neuter, return (TNR) and colony management.
“It is left to volunteer rescue groups and members of the community to do what they can to stop the breeding and get cats off the streets when they can,” she said. “These individuals risk their welfare day in day out; it is simply not right.”
As for the conservationists who advocate extreme measures, they need to dial it down a bit with the apocalyptic talk. There are productive ways to handle this problem, and they don’t involve demonizing animals for behaving the way nature intended, whipping people into a frenzy, and calling for the violent extinction of an entire species. Cat owners will need to be onboard for any effort to come up with a meaningful solution, and you won’t secure their cooperation if you’re constantly telling them their companion animals are “murderers” who need to be killed.
Pain In The Bud 
That’s too sick. An ongoing problem.
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The rhetoric from self-styled conservationists gets people riled up, and it’s dangerous.
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Australia and New Zealand are known for their barbarous ways that they use dealing with these poor animals.
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You’re right, they don’t seem to have any qualms about killing them one by one or en masse.
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There are crazies all over the world!!
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Wow! Almost makes me prefer living in a country distracted by war, corruption, and an assault on democracy.
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One more thing that’ll have me waking up in the middle of the night in tears.
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How many rodent plagues do you think they’ll suffer before they realize you can’t undo a process that was started centuries ago without drastic consequences?
Playing God is a dangerous game.
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And i hope rats will overrun that place!!
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All those so-called studies are based on estimates and extrapolations. My husband watched a mockingbird chase a stray cat into a storm drain the other day. I doubt those “researchers” ever even look out a window.
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Exactly. No field work, no effort to gather data. It’s all “We’re experts, we can invent data based on our expertise and massage it until it says what we want it to.”
I feel like a broken record on this, but if these people cannot even tell us how many free roaming cats there are, there’s no way they can have any accurate idea of the cats’ predatory impact.
And as one of them flat-out admitted in a quote I included about the New Zealand vigilantism, they really have no clue how many cats are out there.
That is not a way to make policy and it sure as hell isn’t justification for killing millions of animals. The hardliner talk alone (“Your cat cannot be permitted to live”) shows these are not serious people.
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There are sites that come to my phone. Do not look for them. I guess it comes because my phone knows i love animals. Scary it does that. Anyway. It is called We Love Animals. I just saw a photo of a huge gorilla being gentle with an injured bird and seems to have empathy for bird. I always said animals are smarter than humans.
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You sure it’s not AI? Facebook is saturated with ridiculous AI videos of animals doing insane things, and yes, Facebook shows you content based on your interests. Sometimes it gets it wrong…I remember when Facebook would inundate me with pages about rustic cottages (made with AI) and sand sculptures of Jesus (made with AI) but if you look at any cat pages, it will show you that stuff too.
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Not sure it’s AI. I would hate rhat shit on my phone.
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I certainly do not mind content from Jackson Galaxy. Always fun and educational. Nor do i mind plant based recipes. Heck. I make my own tortillas. Tostadas, etc.
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I guess living with all those killer spiders and snakes have hardened some people’s sense of compassion
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They’re constantly told cats are destroying biodiversity.
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