Why did it suddenly become "pick on cats" season? According to a Mother Jones article, cats are helping destroy the Earth.
Domestic cats, officially considered an invasive species, kill at least a hundred million birds in the US every year—dwarfing the number killed by wind turbines. (See "Apocalypse Meow," below.) They're also responsible for at least 33 avian extinctions worldwide. A recent Smithsonian Institution study found that cats caused 79 percent of deaths of juvenile catbirds in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Bad news, since birds are key to protecting ecosystems from the stresses of climate change—a 2010 study found that they save plants from marauding insects that proliferate as the world warms.
Fine. Let's kill all the cats. Then we'll be so overrun with birds Alfred Hitchcock will have to come back from the dead to help us make sense of it. The article points out that (worldwide, I'm guessing), 970 million birds die each year by flying into buildings, so let's get rid of them, too; 174 million fly into power lines, 80 million crash into vechicles, 72 million die from presticides, 5 million fly into communication towers, and 440,000 fly into wind turbines -- stupid little critters, aren't they? Let's get rid of ALL that stuff and just give the damn planet back to the damn birds. We can be all cozy in our caves (no fires, please!) and the damn Earth and the damn birds will have a grand old time.
And the city of San Diego, cash-strapped like so many metropolitan areas these days, sees a gold mine in "cat taxes."
According to formulas used by the Humane Society of the United States, there are an estimated 373,000 cats in San Diego.
If just 5 percent had been registered at $25 a head, the auditor's office says the city could have saved $536,000 over the past three fiscal years.
Some warn, though, that many cat owners will consider the fee and say, "'Bye, bye, kitty cat" and throw the beasts out. But I don't think most cat people are quite that cruel, though. At least I wouldn't throw my cats out. Might make 'em work a little to earn their keep, though. "Dutch, Maggie -- you want dinner tonight, go kill me a couple of birds and throw 'em on the grill."
This is my brother's cat Bubba, by the way, who rules the house in Texas as well as Dutch and Maggie rule the one in Fort Wayne. I ask you, does he look like a planet killer? Like most cats, he spends a lot of time just sleeping and chowing down ("pillows that eat" is one comedian's description of them). Nice life, and they're a joy to have around. Screw the planet.
