On April 11th, Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resource’s (DNR) Conservation Congress held hearings in the state's 72 counties allowing voters to decide whether to classify free-roaming domestic cats as an ‘unprotected species’ in that state.

As predicted and feared by many, myself included, the proposal passed; a total of 6,830 voted ‘yes’ and 5,201 voted ‘no,’ according to results released yesterday by the DNR. Fifty-one counties approved the plan, 20 rejected it, and one had a tie.  With 5.4 million people in the state, only roughly 0.2% of the state turned out to vote.  I guess protecting pets has not generated that much interest.

And now, Wisconsin could soon join Minnesota and South Dakota in allowing anyone with a small-game license to shoot any cat they spot that is lacking a collar, or any cat they spot which is not under its owner's direct control.

The ‘yes’ vote from Monday night's ballot will now be considered by the Conservation Congress Executive Committee, the Natural Resources Board, and the State Legislature.

In response to outcries from cat lovers who worry that their pets will be killed, wounded, or maimed if allowed to roam outdoors, the answer is that you now probably do have more need to worry about your pet’s future safety in Wisconsin – and soon, probably in many other states in this country – many of which are already salivating over Wisconsin’s first round cat hunting ‘success.’

Killing nonhuman life forms these days, which we now routinely deem to be in our way of so called ‘modern progress,’ seems to be an increasingly popular American sport.

As the proponent of this extremely callous and inhumane cat hunting free-for-all proposal in Wisconsin proclaimed, "Domestic cats are supposed to be under the ownership of an individual. If you open the door and let your cat out at night, you've changed its status."  And its status could now soon be ‘Fair Game.’

Mr. Smith, the cat-hating firefighter from La Crosse, Wisconsin said his cat hunting proposal was designed to protect songbirds and other small wildlife -- "whether it's baby ducks, baby turkeys, smaller rabbits, small squirrels, or a whole host of other wildlife," he told a television station in Minneapolis.

I truly have to wonder if Mr. Smith and his ‘cat hating/bird loving’ friends in Wisconsin have ever heard of the National Audubon Society.

Their century old mission has been to conserve and restore our country’s natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats - for the benefit of both humanity and the earth's biological diversity.

And the Audubon Society maintains a national network of community-based nature centers and chapters, scientific and educational programs, and advocates on behalf of areas sustaining important bird populations, engaging millions of people of all ages and backgrounds in positive conservation experiences.

According to the National Audubon Society, bird populations are, indeed, declining throughout this entire nation, not just in Wisconsin, but the cause for their decline is definitely not felines.

A State of the Birds Report in the September/October 2004 issue of Audubon Magazine concluded that the most serious threats to our wild birds today are "the outright loss of bird habitat due to poor land use, the clear-cutting of forests, the draining of wetlands, and, of course, urban sprawl. Other threats include climate change, air and water pollution, pesticides, and collisions with tall buildings, towers, and wind turbines.”

In other words, we modern day humans -- not these innocent cats -- are the biggest bird killers in this country.

The current debate over cat hunting in Wisconsin has also brought to the forefront a problem that has been often overlooked by many for far too long – the realities of free-roaming (feral) cats and the perceptions people hold about them:

1) There are, indeed, lots of homeless cats wandering around this vast nation of ours. Estimates in Wisconsin range from 1.4 million to 2 million, but no one has bothered to accurately measure the number.   And there are millions and millions of them spread throughout the United States.

2) Free roaming cats do eat birds, but roughly only one-fifth of a free-roaming cat's diet consists of bird prey according to numerous scientific studies.

The other four-fifths mainly consist of rodents (mice and rats), not songbirds, or squirrels, or baby rabbits as Mr. Smith implies.

And it should also be remembered that American domestic cats are the descendents of European and African cats which were imported to this country to help eradicate its large rodent problem.

This should give Mr. Smith and the rest of his cat hating friends some Food for Thought; but I’m betting that they’ve never heard of The Plague either.

Here is some more Food For Thought for cat haters in this country:

3) According to a San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) report, biologist Robert Berg found that feral cats in Golden Gate Park had much more success in hunting rats than birds, making the native quail population in the park far stronger since there were fewer rats around to raid the bird nests.

4) Another widespread myth exists that feral cats are a major source of rabies.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), cats account for only 2 to 4 percent of reported rabies cases in the entire United States. And according to the CDC's Web site, 36 people died from rabies in the United States between 1990 and 2001.

Of those 36 cases, nine sources of the rabies were confirmed - and none of them were cats.

5) Many people also assume that killing millions of feral cats will solve the problem.

"You can't just go out and kill a bunch of cats and assume that they're not going to come back," said Jessica Frohman, program manager for Alley Cat Allies, a national non-profit clearinghouse for information on feral and stray cats.

When an area is cleared of a colony of feral cats, neighboring un-spayed/un-neutered cats will move in and rapidly re-colonize the territory, a phenomenon known as the "vacuum effect."

According to the Messybeast Cat Resource Archive, a not-for-profit collection of feline information based in Great Britain, each generation of cats that repopulates an area will be smarter and faster than the last, making them even more of a threat to local wildlife.

Frohman cited a case in Newburyport, Mass., where 200 cats were removed from the area. Two years later, there were still at least 200 cats.

The feral cat population "is a serious problem that needs to be fixed, but it's a serious problem that was purely man-made," Frohman said.

6) People must begin to realize that the millions of free roaming cats in this country today are the progeny of our once cherished pets – whom we callously let roam free – whom we did not even bother spaying or neutering – and whom we so heartlessly abandoned to the wild to fend for themselves.

Many veterinarians and feral cat advocacy organizations, including Alley Cat Allies, now endorse "trap-neuter-return" (TNR) for these abandoned children of our former pets, in which free roaming cats are humanely trapped, evaluated, vaccinated, and sterilized by veterinarians.

Tame feral cats can then be adopted out; cats which are too wild to be domesticated can be humanely returned to their colonies; and cats that are too ill or too injured to recover can then be euthanized.

Recent studies also prove that TNR costs far less than killing stray cats, and case studies have shown that in municipalities and rural areas where TNR is implemented, complaints about stray cats quickly decrease.

As someone who has been working in the field, utilizing these TNR techniques for years – I know it works – and that it truly is the humane answer to this problem – and this answer has nothing to do with hunting these cats down and shooting them on sight.

And I also know that we had all better quickly get involved in protecting our nonhuman neighbors in this nation – including feral cats and wild birds - or far too soon, there won’t be many nonhuman neighbors left to protect.  And our children and grandchildren will be sadly left with a world with very few animals in it - which to me, would truly be a damn shame.

The Wisconsin State Legislature will also be considering a proposal to lower the state hunting age from 12 to 10 years of age.

I had been considering moving to Wisconsin, but I never will now.  The mere thought of cat hating adults soon possibly teaching and encouraging their 10 year old children to hunt and kill cats truly turns my stomach.