Unwanted Cats - America Culture Wars

July 11th 2013 - America - THE CULTURE WARS - Like any country America has it cultural divisions and they run deep. I am not writing about different ethnic groups but different ideas and concepts as to how to deal with fundamental life problems and find a better way of life.



Take abortion: this is a classic. It is about life, human life, which is more valuable than a cat's life as far most people are concerned.

The anti-abortion lobby is having success in America in conservative states. Texas is trying to tighten the law on abortion and is having a rocky ride.

Set that against Obama's progressive national legislation on matters such as gay marriage and you can sense the cultural battleground.

The same sort of cultural war is taking place in the world of cats. Do you regulate cat ownership? Or is that the nanny state gone mad? Do you ban declawing? Yes, but it won't happen nationwide because of a deep rooted culture of treating the cat as an animal that people can do as they like with. There is a growing mass of people who want change on declawing. They say they are more enlightened. The battleground, here, is humane behaviour regarding our cats.

What about the feral cat? The stray cat? Wandering, breeding cats? There are too many, people say. There are too many unwanted cats yet pet stores still sell kittens supplied by kitten factories. Not much is being done to quell the supply chain. There are many liberal minded people who hate to see cats being sold in stores yet business refuses to stop doing it and will challenge any attempt to ban it. Another cultural war. The battleground is the high street.

There are those that want to keep killing unwanted cats at shelters. Keep the status quo. The shelters would be out of business if there were no unwanted cats. On the other side there are those who want to see a complete rethink on how to balance the demand for cats with the supply of cats and in the meantime to stop killing the unwanted cats en masse.

The current battleground of the unwanted cat war is the cat shelters. It is time for some harmony and consensus thinking.

What about cats versus birds? Bird conservationists versus cat lovers is a classic cultural war. There are others such as scientists who dislike cats and laypeople, ordinary people, who see through their bias.