The case of what doctors are calling bubonic plague that hit the headlines recently in Bend opens some nasty doors.
From the time it was first identified as the scourge it is, in 1347, it has killed millions of people throughout the world.
In the beginning everyone said it was spread by people coughing on each other, so everyone scattered to get away from the agony of death. That didn't work because no one had figured out that the horrifying disease wasn't spread by people coughing on or touching one another, but by a tiny flea that lives on rats. And rats are still trying to live with us.
The disease is transferred the same way today. The Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) is a parasite of rodents, primarily of the genus rattus, which includes the brown rat, black rat, and wharf rat—all of which are found worldwide. However, it is also found on our lovely golden-mantled ground squirrel, belding's ground squirrel, bushy-tailed packrat, white-footed mouse, etc., etc. And that opens the door to feral and outdoor cats.
The feral cat that bit Mr. Paul Gaylord of Prineville, who is now a thin thread away from dying, must have had the plague, which means the flea(s) that carry the plague may still be around, living on the rodents under or near his home.
History has shown that cats are a key ingredient in the spread of the disease.
People were keeping cats in and around their homes as so-called "pets" when the plague ravaged the Byzantine Empire during the reign of the emperor Justinian in 542 AD. Cats probably hauled dead rats infested with hungry fleas into the people's homes. Ultimately, 25 million people died of the plague—and they (literally) didn't know what hit them.
Whether we like it or not, the oriental rat flea is on the periphery of our domesticity. Back in the '50s and '60s I worked with some very brilliant scientists who were trained in the field of epidemiology and studied how wildlife transmits diseases to humans. They were looking for rabies in the local bat population and found none.
But they did find plague fleas in our rodent populations. We also searched packrat middens and ground squirrel borrows and found the flea there, too.
According to the American Society for the Prevention for Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the number of feral cats in the U.S. is estimated to be in the tens of millions. The ASPCA endorses Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) as the only proven humane and effective method to manage feral cat colonies. I disagree most strongly.
It makes no ecological or health-oriented sense to place a feral cat back into the wild to fight for food and predation. It only comes out as another health threat to us, because outdoor cats transmit wildlife-borne diseases that contribute to the death of hundreds of thousands of indigenous wildlife.
To all you wonderful, good-hearted people who love cats and want to see them live a happy life, I'm sorry to say this, but feral cats should be humanely euthanized.
They have been eliminated from many parts of the world because they were out of control, killing indigenous wildlife and spreading disease. Even with motor vehicles, coyotes and great horned owls, they're out of control here too.
Cats—whether the people who love and keep them like it or not—are killers by instinct. They have genes that force them to be curious about anything that moves, which usually ends with them killing it. The people who "put the cat out" are not only sending it to kill our birds, reptiles and small mammals, they are endangering their cats and endangering us.
Not too long ago I was asked to help a man in Sisters who had bats in his home. During the time we discussed his dilemma, I noticed he had two very beautiful house-cats whom he was worried about with bats in his home. I asked him if he let his cats out and his response was, "Oh, no! I love my cats too much to let them run outside."
OK, cool down cat people and please think for a moment. How many times have you let your cats back into your home in the morning and found a mouse, bird, lizard or even a nice, big juicy June Bug on your doorstep? Cats kill things. Like it or not—that's what cats do.
If there happens to be a flea needing a blood meal on the dead mouse on your door-step, that may be a serious problem—for you. That's not my imagination speaking, that's reality. A few years back, a dear young child let her cat in one morning and the cat came in carrying a dead ground squirrel. A flea leaped off the ground squirrel onto the child for a blood meal and left the child to die from the plague.
The reality is that plague is here in our rodent population. It does not reach epidemic proportions because man and flea don't usually mix. But with the cat population growing—in part because of the good-hearted people of "Spay and Save" letting them loose, the potential for more contact with plague vectors is, literally, at our doorstep.
It is way past time to manage cats the same way we manage dogs. As nonsensical as it sounds, there should be a "leash-law" for cats as there is for dogs. My neighbor's cats come over and kill my wild cottontail rabbits, chipmunks, lizards and birds—and I can't do anything about it.
I do not want them leaving anymore dead mice on my back porch for me to take care of, not with the chance I might end up in the hospital slowly dying of some disease brought into my home by someone else's cat.
Cats should be registered the same way dog are registered, and identified with a collar and name tag, so everyone knows who the cat is supposed to belong to.
That way, we can capture an unwanted outdoor cat in a live-trap, call the owner to come get it and talk about "pet responsibility." If it has no tag, it is a feral cat and can be humanely euthanized. If we catch the same cat again, we talk to county animal control about it.
It's time for cats to not only be managed, but pay their own way as dog-owners do.
written by What? , July 11, 2012
You might consider attending a class in logic since your post makes no sense. First you state (actually scream in all caps) that "the universe is indifferent" but follow that up with "everything happens for a reason". So which is it? You, like our current crop of far right lawmakers, can't have it both ways.
written by viewmaster , July 12, 2012
thanks,
THANK YOU!!!
Thanks for having the nerve to write and publish this article. The evidence that feral cats are destructive has been clear for decades. Can we get a plan for feral horses too?
written by DavidP , July 18, 2012
written by Nature Advocate , July 18, 2012
There is also no difference between the pneumonic, bubonic, and septicemic forms of the plague. They are all caused by the very same bacterium. The only difference is how it manifests itself in the infected organism, and thereby how it is retransmitted. An animal infected and develops the pneumonic form can retransmit it by just coughing in your area. (How it spread so far and wide so fast in Europe. The source of the saying "Bless you" for sneezing. Thinking that praying someone's airborne sputum away would save your life. A simple handkerchief fad could have saved millions of lives, instead of their ineffective prayer.)
Cat-to-Human Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8059908
If an animal instead manifests the symptoms as bubonic (in lymph nodes) or septicemic (in the blood), then contact with either of those infected fluids will also retransmit it.
The bacterium can also manifest itself in more than one way in the very same organism after infection, and transmit it again in up to all 3 ways.
There is also no difference between the pneumonic, bubonic, and septicemic plague. They are all caused by the very same bacterium. The only difference is how it manifests itself in the infected organism, and thereby how it is retransmitted. An animal infected and developing the pneumonic form can retransmit it by just coughing in your area. (How it spread so far and wide so fast in Europe. The source of the saying "bless you" for sneezing. Thinking that praying someone's airborne sputum away would save your life. A simple handkerchief fad could have saved millions of lives, instead of their ineffective prayer.)
Cat-to-Human Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague
(I posted a link as proof, but it wouldn't post, so instead Google for (include quotes): "Cat-transmitted fatal pneumonic plague")
If an animal instead manifests the symptoms as bubonic (in lymph nodes) or septicemic (in the blood), then contact with either of those infected fluids will also retransmit it.
The bacterium can also manifest itself in more than one way in the very same organism after infection, and transmit it again in up to all 3 ways at once.
Interesting note: One winter I tried feeding one of the shot-dead cats on my land to the last few starving opossum (all the rest of my larger native wildlife starved to death from cats destroying all their food sources). Those opossum promptly died from some disease in that cat-meat. Alarming -- in that opossum, due to their cooler body temperatures, cannot contract nor transmit many common diseases, not even rabies. They are one of the most disease-free animals in N. America. Yet ... something in that cat-meat was able to kill them all. Cats truly are complete and total wastes of flesh. They can't even be used to feed wild animals safely. Leaving any of these invasive-species cats out in nature, alive OR dead, is no better than intentionally poisoning your native wildlife to death.
The risk is very low as it is,think of all the people who have pets with a high prey drive and they aren't dying of plaque!
written by Factsplease , July 19, 2012
What town and what year did this occur where the "dear young child let her cat in one morning and the cat came in carrying a dead ground squirrel. A flea leaped off the ground squirrel onto the child for a blood meal and left the child to die from the plague."
Again, wanting to know where and when this occurred.
EXACTLY why I shoot and bury ALL stray cats, collared or not. Every last one of the cats I shot and buried weren't sterilized (were they even vaccinated? Doesn't matter at all now now). I checked before dumping each one in their well-deserved hole in the ground. I've a box full of collars from stray cats that weren't sterilized. If you don't destroy EVERY last stray cat you see, you've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to solve the problem.
BTW: Destroying cats is NOT hating cats nor even a fear of cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Burmese Pythons, African Cichlids, or any of the other destructive invasive-species have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don't even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is people who spread an invasive-species that tortures-to-death all other wildlife that have zero respect for life. They don't even care about their cats dying a slow death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons. etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don't even respect their neighbor. This speaks volumes about your disgusting character.
If people have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself to blame. THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat's grave.
You can warn cat-owners until you are blue in the face. I tried to reason with them for 9-10 years, even giving them gifts to befriend them. Thinking that, when asked later, they'd stop releasing their cats. Another 4 years arguing. Another 2 years warning them their cats would be shot. Even the Sheriff warned them that I had EVERY RIGHT to shoot their cats.
Still that did no good. And after those 15 years of trying to reason with idiots, JUST LIKE YOU, I looked around one day and realized I hadn't seen any owls, fox, turkeys, grouse, hawks, snakes, spring-peepers, chipmunks, raccoons, songbirds ... I hadn't seen nor heard ANY OF THESE for 15 YEARS! ALL GONE! NOTHING BUT CATS HERE. ALL other wildlife DESTROYED by cats. From smallest of prey skinned-alive for cats' play-toys (not even eating them) up to the top predators that starved to death from cats destroying their foods.
That's when I realized I made a foolish foolish error. I was trying to reason with delusional invasive species lovers to protect valuable native wildlife -- just as you don't ask your local career thieves how to protect your valuables. It was time to give them the exact same amount of respect and consideration in return -- NONE.
So on advice of the Sheriff the shooting started and didn't stop until EVERY LAST ONE OF THEIR CATS WAS GONE -- HUNDREDS OF THEM. Even when shooting their cats they released MORE cats. Come to find out they don't really even care about cats in the first place!
Thanks for posting Margarita. You're an EXCELLENT example of why people should ignore ANYTHING that fools like you say. Instead just do what needs to be done. Destroy every last cat you see that's away from supervised confinement. If you waste your time listening to these cat-lover morons you can kiss all your amazing wildlife good-bye.
written by drakus , July 20, 2012
written by Most Dangerous Invasive Species = Man. , July 21, 2012
written by stop animal abuse , August 15, 2012
cheers,