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Animal control - we need to find common ground By Miss Donna Rieder After reading about the proposed animal ordinance, and also reading responses posed by a few local residents (Joyce Coomer, Susan Smith, and Marie Freeman, whose questions I will address at the end of this post), I decided to attend last weeks' Fiscal Court meeting, and find out more. I didn't know that the animal control issue wasn't up for discussion at this meeting, but I was allowed to speak anyway. This is basically how my presentation went: "My name is Donna Rieder, I live on White Oak Church Road, right around the corner from the Sam Coffey Hole. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Sam Coffey Hole, it's where my creek, Big Clifty Creek, feeds into Russell Creek, and has long been a favorite place for people to go to swim. It's now where people go to make drug deals, dump their old sofas, TVs and garbage, and also where they dump their unwanted animals. Those animals go looking for food, and since I'm the first driveway they come to, they end up at my place. Jimmy Harmon has been to my place DOZENS of times since I moved here in 2008, and has picked up countless strays. He used to pick up cats AND dogs, but the shelter doesn't allow him to pick up cats anymore because he was picking up dozens of cats every month. He came out to pick up the two dogs someone dumped a couple weeks ago, but said he couldn't take the 6 cats. "The shelter charges people $10 (per cat) to drop a cat off. I've already taken in 4 tomcats who showed up at my place, and were spraying urine all over my barn and porches, at $10 a pop. So there I was, with 3 cats and 3 kittens, looking at a $60 charge to take them to the shelter. Thankfully, Jimmy understood my situation, and took the cats to the shelter." "I then told the court that I didn't think I should have to be financially responsible for everyone else' unwanted animals, and asked to be allowed to take those that come to my place to the shelter without having to pay the $10 fee. Judge Cowan said she'd make some calls, and both she and several of the Magistrates agreed that I shouldn't have to pay. "In the conversation that followed, I reiterated what I had said previously in a letter to Columbia Magazine, citing the fact that a female cat can have 3 litters of 4-8 kittens 3 times a year, and that 1 female cat and her offspring can produce 430,000 cats in just 7 years. I told the court that if I didn't trap the cats that showed up at my place, I would soon be overrun with feral cats. MANY feral cats. Cats can survive in the wild, but they won't thrive. They end up inbreeding, which lowers their resistance to disease, they become infested with fleas, ticks, and worms. They fight and end up with nasty wounds that become infected. Some mothers don't get enough to eat, so their kittens are weak, some get eaten alive by owls or coyotes. Many of these cats end up being run over by cars. It's a miserable life, to say the least. "I then told the court that their proposal to impose a fee on people who have more than 10 animals, is flawed. People are not going to come in and voluntarily hand over money. To try to go door-to-door and police every house, would not only take thousands of (paid) man-hours, but going on someone's property without their permission is a violation of their 4th Amendment rights; it's against the law. Finally, trying to enforce that ordinance would be next to impossible, unless you have neighbors snitching on neighbors, which could get ugly. "Instead, I proposed that only purebred animals that are registered with a SPECIFIC BREED REGISTRY (i.e. American Kennel Club) should be allowed to be bred, and those owners should pay for a kennel license. (We're talking about dogs and cats here, not animals raised for food) For all the other dogs and cats, there should be a mandatory spay/neuter law. I understand that the cost for this undertaking would be enormous, but we need to stop the pet overpopulation problem where it starts, by spaying and neutering. If we start now, there won't be 500,000 MORE un-fixed cats in the future. "Okay, to answer the ladies questions: Susan is feeding 20 cats a day, which is probably costing her at least $100 a month. God bless her tender heart. But several cats could be fixed with that amount of money. Joyce, NOBODY has the right to remove a pet from someone's home, unless that animal has bitten someone and the owner can't produce a legal Rabies certificate. But the TNR (Trap, Neuter, and Release) program is flawed. Those animals are neutered, yes, but it's not cost-effective for rescuers to have a Feline Leukemia and FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis) test done on those cats, so carriers are released back into the colony, only to infect even more cats, including new cats that may join the colony. Feline Leukemia and FIP are highly contagious feline diseases. Instead of spending all that money fixing those feral cats, why not just give them a humane death, and spend that money on helping some poor individual with getting their 3 momma cats spayed? Sometimes it's better to have a humane death, than to live an inhumane life. Remember what I said about feral cats being covered with fleas and ticks? Being run over by cars? Going hungry? It's a cruel, miserable life. "In response to the idea of a farmer having lots of cats around for rodent control, cats are Apex predators; if 3 or 4 cats can't control the rodents on someone's farm, they have a serious rodent problem. Those cats also need to be fixed. I was at a farm awhile back getting some hay for my goats, and there were several cats and more than a dozen (probably inbred) kittens running around. I said something like "you sure have plenty of kittens," to which the farmer replied, "Yeah, I need to take them all down to the bridge." I think we all clearly understand what that meant. Killing innocent kittens is NOT a humane way of dealing with them, and shouldn't be tolerated in a civilized society. "People, we need to find a common ground, and work together to slow the pet overpopulation problem. We need to break the cycle, and stop the problem where it starts: with out-of-control breeding. I urge each and every one of you who loves and cares about animals, to attend the next Fiscal Court meeting and let your voices be heard. " This story was posted on 2021-08-02 10:00:23
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