CATS ARE HAPPY: Wisconsin Governor Nixes Kat Kill Kalamity

Good mews coming out of Wisconsin: The state’s governnor has made it clear he will nix moves to declare (literally) open season on feral cats.

MADISON, Wis. – A proposal to legalize the killing of feral cats is not going to succeed, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.

“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. “What it does is sort of hold us up as a state that everybody is kind of laughing at right now.”

He told reporters his office had received calls from around the country denouncing a proposal adopted Monday at meetings of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, a public advisory group, that would classify wild, free-roaming cats as an unprotected species that kills song birds and other wildlife.

In other words, his office got (kitty) littered with emails. And he is in effecting going to VETO any move to let hunters make gun-toting beelines for the felines because a whole batch of people apparently were starting to stock up on ammunition:

Outdoor enthusiasts approved the proposal 6,830 to 5,201 at Monday’s spring hearings of the group.

The results get forwarded to the state Natural Resources Board for consideration, but any official action would have to be passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.

Animal rights groups belittled the idea as inhumane and dangerous.

Doyle said he respects the Conservation Congress but “on this one I think everybody recognizes it’s not going anywhere.”

Some experts estimate that 2 million wild cats roam Wisconsin, and the state says studies show feral cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds a year.South Dakota and Minnesota both allow wild cats to be shot.

He’s right about the image. Yes, South Dakota and Minnesota already allow it. But this new proposal is in the headlines NOW and he can’t change those two states — but he can influence his own..and the way his state is perceived.

One aspect of this law that some discussions brought out was that if someone’s housecat got out, it could be shot because the second it left the house it became a feral cat under the new law. There was no provision for means testing for cats under the proposed law.

We had one person who works for an animal rights group email us that this was a dumb idea and wouldn’t have gone anywhere. It MIGHT have…with a different governor. But we suspect the politicos in the legisature would have killed it as quick as the hunters would have sought to kill stray cats.



TMV thanks the great new online tabloid Sploid for the tip.