Back Talk

This has been one of those continuing, perennial, everlasting issues that refuses to go away regardless of the numerous attempts that good animal loving people have tried all those years. It’s like an incurable skin rash; the description on the tube of that new ointment sounds so great, and it feels so soothing on the skin, you just know you have finally found the solution. Then you discover you have merely treated the symptom because that devilish rash returns worse than ever.
The article described a new volunteer organization – Topcats – that is going to make the nasty rash go away. They are going to capture feral cats, neuter them, and then return them to the wild where they will feed them through their next celibate nine lives. They report that this method of “decreasing the population by attrition” is the only workable solution because euthanasia does not work. Spokesperson for the group said that 5 million cats were euthanized last year, that the Topcats have neutered, freed, and feed 508 cats in two and one-half years. She said, “There are 45 cats for every person in the United States.” Let’s see now, I’m having a small problem with the numbers so I took my rudimentary math skills and calculated that, if there are 45 cats per person nationwide and using a local population figure of 20000 people, there are 900,000 cats in Paradise. At the Topcats rate, they process 203 of these per year. Even more head-scratching, their figures tell us there are 13 trillion, 500 billion cats nationwide. I’m surprised we can walk without stepping in cat litter.
I don’t want to go too far out on the feral cat limb, what with my cat-loving friends and family; however, do the above “facts” seem a trifle perplexing to you?