Cats are being killed on Moscow’s University of Idaho campus. According to an article in the Idaho Statesman: “Two state agencies say the University of Idaho failed to seek approval for a program that trapped and euthanized feral cats on campus.”
In a UI Argonaut article, Veterinarian Autenried said that the cats are trapped because they are wild, sick, “completely feral,” and unmanageable. “The captured cats were a mixture of kittens and adults.”
Feral: ferocious, vicious, savage. Savage kittens, then.
Autenried claims he “gives each cat a check-up.” After which they are gassed, lethally injected and incinerated.
“I am a veterinarian, and I can tell a pet cat from a feral cat without a long evaluation.”
That does not mean merely visual. That does not mean, “I spy with my little eye a cat in a trap who needs to die.”
I see a grand irony worth mentioning. Cats are being killed on a college campus that has adopted the book “Soul of an Octopus” as their common read this academic year. The author, Sy Montgomery, will be on our cat-killing campus on Oct. 3. Montgomery talks about learning humility, compassion and empathy from getting to know and understand these marvelous creatures named octopus. Accepting the challenges and differences between species is something that can only benefit and enrich the lives of our university students. Killing animals with no accountability is not the lesson I want my students to learn.
I have a Richard Feynman quote posted for my students on our BbLearn site:
“I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
There are legitimate questions to be asked, from both sides of this issue. But trapping and killing cats on a college campus as an answer is indeed something that needs to be questioned.
-— Elizabeth Sloan