Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/08/02/purrents-complaining-that-new-feline-tax-could-be-a-cat-astrophe.html
…
6 Likes
Contributed by Allan Rose Hill
6 Likes
4 Likes
the cost of sterilising a cat can be the equivalent of a month’s wages for some Kenyans.
yikes. ( but at least people will have even less money after they pay the tax!? /s )
5 Likes
Good luck with collecting that…
ETA: Put the money in a box, and deliver it to the tax office like a kitty gom jabbar.
7 Likes
The look of a cat that cannot be owned.
5 Likes
We’re talking about cats living in a place where their wild ancestors first evolved, and they’re probably perfectly capable of scraping by without human support. I bet they even interbreed with the wild population pretty regularly.
So no. They probably can’t be owned.
4 Likes
If a person doesn’t control where an animal goes or take responsibility for what it does then is it even really their “pet” to begin with?
2 Likes
If they have a little box, then the ancient law applies, “Wherever I lay my shat, that’s my home.”
2 Likes
I’m not completely sure where you’re coming from with this, but this isn’t a suburb in Minnesota we’re talking about. These animals have been there for thousands of years. And the people feeding them, and petting them, and providing veterinary care when they can afford to, are the direct descendants of people who first began this relationship with the African Wild Cat.
If my hackles seem a bit raised, it’s because I know a lot about cats and I have had so many arguments with people about feral and free roaming cats. You would probably not be surprised that anti-free roaming attitude even seems to apply to cats living in places where there have literally always been cats outside. I keep my three cats inside. They’re all fixed and vaccinated. But I live in Oregon.
The world over there are populations of wild or semi-wild animals that have always had a relationship with the local humans, and Westerners walk in and suddenly it’s all, “You shouldn’t feed those animals, they’re wild, they have diseases.” Like, yeah? You think people don’t know that? You think Monkeys only recently started stealing from people in Mumbai? There are people in Ethiopia who feed hyenas and have for generations. They don’t own them, either.
And yeah, I looked it up. Domestic cats across Africa interbreed with African Wild Cats (among other wild small cat species). It’s a major threat to conservation. But only because the populations are growing and urbanizing in a way they never have before, which brings the two subspecies closer together. Unfortunately the public health infrastructure just isn’t there in many places, and the cost of living is too high to prioritize semi-wild pets. Although it’s also worth noting that conservation of genetically pure wild species is a recent and very Western idea to begin with.
3 Likes
I’m not saying these cats shouldn’t be there. I’m saying that the distinction between “pet” and “wild or feral animal” is “does a human take responsibility for this animal’s wellbeing and actions?”
If one of my pets needs medical care or kills a neighbor’s chickens or poops in someone’s yard then that’s my responsibility to deal with. If an animal I happen to be friendly with does those things and I say “not my problem” then it’s not really my pet.
2 Likes
Yes, but it hasn’t always looked like that. What I’m saying, or trying to say, is that these cats are not the cats you will find in a Minnesota suburb because there are no African Wild Cats roaming the wilds of North America. It has nothing to do with the relatively recent industrialization and urbanization of the county and countryside. These specific cats have interbred and interacted with their wild cousins to an extent that they are likely less domesticated than the average feral cat in America. Domestication fundamentally changes an animal, and domestic/wild hybrids are therefore less domesticated and less wild. African Wild Cats cannot be kept as pets because they are wild animas which will always behave like wild animals.
Sometimes I feel like people deliberately misunderstand me to score points. I’m also saying people in Nairobi have a different understanding of and relationship to the cats in their lives than we do. I never suggested that people in Nairobi were living in tents on the Savannah.
Edit to add: look at how cats are treated in Turkey. It isn’t anything like it is here. They are considered basically wild but everyone looks after them collectively, and Turkey is a perfectly modern society. Even modern societies can have different relationships with the same animals than we do.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
