TexasCHLforum.com

fickman wrote:@TAM: But what caliber do you recommend?

.308

pbwalker wrote:

fickman wrote:Wild animals are wild animals, even if they resemble the animals we share our homes with.

Bingo! I think this is something society fails to see today.

[not my personal opinion!]
Some people are troubled on a deeper level than simply whether or not the animal in question is wild. Many people believe that animals in the wild either have the same rights as humans, or lacking that, believe that wild animals are merely being themselves, and we are the ones who have pushed them into the position of preying on us and our resources—so there is some kind of moral equivalency going on there.
[/not my personal opinion!]

Back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, a friend of mine from my Sunday School class had an adult female mountain lion hole up in his suburban backyard in Monrovia. The cat could not be dislodged, and for whatever reason, it could not be darted and moved. California Fish & Game officers ended up shooting and killing it. The outcry from some corners was quite loud. How dare they kill this cat? It was only being the way God made it!. None of those who protested the killing of the mountain lion acknowledged that the property owner (my friend) has a right to be safe in his home......without worrying about a big cat killing one of his kids or a pet. And he did not live out in the sticks. He didn't even live at the edge of town. He lived 3 or 4 blocks away from undeveloped foothills land, but well within the city limits.

Sentient people all understand that big cats (and bears, which were a problem in Monrovia too) are just reacting to the perfect storm of drought in the foothills and plentiful food and water in suburbia. They're going where the food and water is....same as you or I would do. BUT, if that is where your thinking stops, then you have a very limited view and you're failing to take into account that humans have rights, and your failing to observe some kind of priority in favor of your own species. People have rights, and among those rights are the right (secured by our founding documents, none of which include animals in their benefits) to be secure in the persons and their property.

I've owned a number of cats over the years, and I like cats just fine. But they are animals. I have had several of them put down by veterinarians over the years—something I wouldn't even dream of doing to a person I loved—and I loved those cats. We have a moral responsibility to not be unnecessarily cruel to our animals.....all of our animals......but we own them. They are legally our chattel. Those that nobody owns and are feral are legally subject to the same kinds of laws that regulate how we are supposed to deal with other feral nuisance animals. That is to say that, if somebody really does object to the way that a homeowner or farmer is dealing with nuisance animals which are affecting that homeowner's or farmer's quality of life, and nobody else is taking care of it, then let the protestor come on down and solve the problem. If they are not willing to do that, then the protestor should at least have the good grace to shut up about someone else's efforts to deal with a difficult problem.

My guess is that the OP doesn't generally get a kick out of going around and killing cats, but he has a significant problem on his hands and nobody is helping him fix it. He's asked for a caliber recommendation probably partly because he wants to make sure that if he shoots a cat, he dispatches it humanely. Nothing he's said has indicated that he enjoys the suffering of feral cats, but he does need to get rid of them, for sanitation reasons as much as anything else. If one of us doesn't like how he's handling it, then send him a PM asking how you can help, and then actually go down there and help him. Otherwise, trying to shame him or criticize him for the decision he's made to fix it on his own is pretty much no help at all, and it certainly isn't going to prolong the cats' lives.

That's my 2¢.