Saturday, December 29, 2007

LAPD Enlists Aid of Feral Cats

Click post title for story about how the LA police department has turned to feral cats to solve rodent issues at some of their stations, declaring this approach humane and a win for the cats, who otherwise would have been killed at shelters, and a win for the LAPD and their rodent problems.

4 comments:

  1. i saw that this morning on my daily run through the papers i read online! It was on the Daily Breeze site (DB is the paper for the south bay and beach cities). How cool! Rats are a big problem in parts of LA, especially in the cities around the port.

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  2. It is so good among all the horrible news we get every day to read such a wonderful story!
    Thank you for all the wonderful things you do for cats and for your blog to share it with us!
    Karl

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  3. You are welcome, and thanks for the words of kindness.

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  4. I am from Los Angeles county, and I have been following these working feral cats since I saw them on tv news last year. This is certainly a very good news, and we need every good news about our feral cats. Feral cats deserve kindness and empathy, and there are so many ways we can help them.

    This is not the first that feral cats are used to work to control rodent population. Last year, I have read about the Kabul Cat Company. The NATO Headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan are using cats to protect our soldiers from rats and cobras. At first, they got rid of the cats by releasing them to the wild miles and miles away because of fear of rabies. When the cats were gone, they learned a very hard lesson and had to get the cats back. Now, approx. 60-70 cats patrol the installation.

    I wouldn't have found out about the Kabul Cat Company, if it were not for U.S. Army Col. Jared Kline who were among the petitioners who boycotted this Aussie environmentalist, Kaye Kessing, who advocated eating of feral cats to swiftly eradicate them. As Col. Kline stated, we do need to reconsider the positive contribution of cats to our environment. People have just simply forgotten that or refuse to acknowledge their contribution to keep us safe. Of course, we need to control their population down and there are non lethal ways we can do to help them.

    I, myself,have rescued, fostered, and adopted 8 formerly feral cats and 1 stray dog who was in bad shape when I found him (and it was also right on time, because the animal control pick up van was trying to catch him).

    http://www.nato.int/shape/news/2004/05/i040514.htm


    Edna A.

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