In other news...

[pyrsandponies]

People Suck:

Animal shelters seeing influx of cats

Meanwhile, fear of family pets picking up the virus from eating wild birds has led to a flood of abandoned cats in France as people act on what experts are describing as an "avian flu psychosis."

Gino Bardet, the manager of a shelter in Brignais, near Lyon, says 50 cats were abandoned in the past two days, more than twice the usual number.

"People have to stop bringing their cats to shelters because shelters are already overcrowded," he told CBC News. "And also, people have to come adopt cats as soon as possible."

GRRRRR.

Comments

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I guess that might be unusual in France - it is in Britain - but there's still no excuse for not seeing it as a solution when circumstances have changed.

assholes.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

actually, when i lived in France, I lived with more than one family who had "indoor only" cats.... Philosel was the mama siamese chez Goust, and she was lovely and peaceful. Cachou, her son, lived chez LaJonie (if you know French candies, you'll see the humour in his name). He was a SPAZ. He liked to hide behind the couch and JUMP out as I passed, claws bared, and attack my legs. ESPECIALLY if I was wearing nylons ;).

[lietya.livejournal.com]

OK, then there's even less excuse for these jackasses.

(I do know that most British believe it's cruel to keep a cat indoors - and, given that in the situations where they say this there are no natural predators, no traffic dangers, no disease risk, and very few other threats, I can even agree with it. It's not an applicable standard for most of this country, of course.)

(I'd be a hypocrite if I disagreed - my cats get to go out into our fenced yard under supervision, meaning I've made the same kind of risk assessment and decided the minute possibility of a bad result is worth letting them take such joy in the yard.)

[raithen.livejournal.com]

our cats have always been outdoor cats - but they were also both strays who chose us, which makes a difference, I think. They'd already learned to survive.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's also totally different when it's a cat who has been living on its own outside for a while. when we adopted a stray, we actually let her out to roam too, although we did lock her in nights. (She turned out to have FeLV - born with it - so we don't have her anymore, poor baby.)