Mountain View City Council & Water District Election
Thank you for visiting Fat Cat Rescue.
This year's race for Mountain View City Council on November 4th was very important, and the new Council, which will begin its term on January 1, 2015, will have an opportunity to influence the fate of outdoor cats in Mountain View. We are pleased to report that the candidates we endorsed were elected. Thanks for your support.
Elected to Mountain View City Council
Elected to Santa Clara Valley Water District
Did you know?
Did you know the current City Council is heavily lobbied by the Audubon Society and other large, national special interest groups?
These special interest groups:
In a nutshell, outdoor cats — be they abandoned, stray, people's pets, or feral — that are being cared for by people are at risk at being removed from areas of Mountain View.
The Audubon Society wants to eradicate all outdoor cats. They don't care if they are people's pets, strays, lost cats, ferals, or abandoned — they just want them gone, in order to protect birds. They believe the solution to reducing the number of outdoor cats is trap-and-kill.
But how to get rid of all those outdoor cats?
The Audubon Society continues to employ Ted Williams (as a contractor) for their national Audubon magazine. Last year, Mr. Williams, then editor-at-large, wrote an article in the Orlando Sentinel identifying Tylenol as an effective poison for feral cats and blaming those in favor of TNR from blocking Tylenol registration with the FDA as a feral cat poison. The Audubon Society quickly suspended Williams' contract, only to reinstate it 10 days later. Williams apologized for sullying the reputation of the Audubon Society, adding that he shouldn't have used the term Tylenol, he should have "used the generic, lesser-known name."
Audubon Society: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles/blog/audubon-and-ted-williams
Williams' apology: http://mag.audubon.org/articles/blog/apology-ted-williams
Peter Wolf (Best Friends Animal Society): http://www.voxfelina.com/2013/03/audubon-editor-suspended-pending-further-review/ and http://www.voxfelina.com/2013/03/audubon-editor-suggests-poisoning-feral-cats/
The original Orlando Sentinal article has been saved here.
The current City Council has been heavily influenced by the Audubon Society, and other national special interest groups, who have full-time, paid lobbyists. These special interest groups believe that outdoor cats — whether they are abandoned, stray, feral, or someone's pet — should be eliminated, because they are the primary cause of the decline in bird population — not people, loss of habitat, pollution, climate change, or native predators! We think this is wrong.
At a City Council meeting in April, the Executive Director of SVACA (the City's contracted provider of animal services) stated that feral cats are not a problem in Mountain View. The City's wildlife biologist stated that there was no evidence that lots of cats were wandering into Shoreline Park from North Bayshore, and that cats were not the source of burrowing owls deaths in the Park; current policy is that any cat that wanders into the Park is trapped and relocated. Nevertheless, the Council – apparently disappointed that they couldn't blame cats for owl deaths, and determined to find that feral cats were a problem somewhere in the City — tasked the City Manager's office to form a stakeholder working group and count outdoor cats throughout the City in order to get data to determine if there is a feral cat "problem."
The stakeholder working group has been already been formed and will begin meeting soon; their recommendations will be given to the new City Council in early 2015. The new Council could vote to enact the recommendations — or reject them. Here's where YOUR VOTE will make a difference. We are striving to elect compassionate, pragmatic Councilmembers.
Let's see how this might play out.
Recruit volunteers to:
Once the City has this data, what will they do with it?
Will they display it on a map with pushpins representing the location of each cat? Better yet, since this is Silicon Valley, develop an app that determines one's GPS coordinates and shows cats within 50 feet of your location?
Unfortunately the data they've collected will be meaningless junk, because they won't be able to determine which cats are feral, someone's pet, abandoned, or stray. And they will probably overcount the number of cats, because cats roam their territory and the same cat may be seen at several locations (and fed by several people). Back in 1989, when the Stanford Cat Network was formed, the University overestimated the number of cats on campus by a factor of about 3, because they knew nothing of cat behavior, and were counting the same cat over and over.
Who exactly owns the data? The City? Since the wildlife volunteers will most likely conduct the cat count, how can anyone trust that biased volunteers will not distort or reveal the data, or take lethal action against the cats without anyone knowing?
All the City will actually know is whether there are cats in an area.
The Audubon Society presented City Council with Beverly Hills' ordinance regulating the feeding and care of outdoor cats as a model ordinance for Mountain View. That ordinance is a costly, unenforceable, administrative nightmare, which punishes compassionate behavior. Mountain View is not Beverly Hills.
Banning people from feeding or caring for a cat is punishing them for being compassionate, and will only drive them underground — and prevent the cat from getting fixed, since they will be reluctant to request help. Regular trap-and-kill programs, where trapped cats are taken to a shelter and euthanized do not work because:
We have urged the City Council to opt for a compassionate, workable solution to reduce the number of outdoor cats in Mountain View, a goal shared by lovers of cats and birds:
We support Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), where unadoptable cats are trapped, neutered, ear-tipped, and then returned to their territory, fed regularly and monitored by caretakers. The population of cats is gradually reduced over time, as no new kittens are born, tame cats are adopted out, and cats that are elderly or ill are re-homed for end-of-life care.
TNR is the only proven effective way to stabilize and reduce the number of outdoor cats because it is humane and rewards compassionate behavior. TNR is endorsed by national humane organizations, such as the ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society and the Humane Society of the United States. Alley Cat Allies is the best known organization advocating for cats.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Fat Cat Rescue