In article , "graham"
wrote:

You can't just leash a cat into your yard like a dog.

Yes, you damn well can!!!!!!! Plenty of people do!

"Cat, the new white meat"

Graham

Though the greater part of me laments the days when every neighborhood had
dogs & children & cats & chickens running loose without fences or
supervision or cages or leashes, short of cutting back the human
population by about three-fourths immediately, we are not apt ever to see
those days again, not in regions anywhere near cities, towns, or suburbs.

It was once regarded as normal to let the dogs do as they pleased & if
they did per chance begin biting children or killing chickens, the dogs
were sumarily shot, and no one was sued. Today it is simply illegal to let
them run loose. It was once normal if one's five-year-old child played in
an empty lot or the nearest woods with a couple other little friends, but
now without adult supervision, a parent could be arrested for criminally
endangering a child or putting it at risk of being carted off & molested
by some adult member of our increasingly psychotic society.

I've lived long enough to see so many ordinary behaviors become
criminalized, & our rights & privileges whittled away from ourselves, our
children, our pets, for all sorts of rational-seeming reasons. The only
wonder is that with everything else restricted or banned, how is that in
most places it is still at least legal to let the cats roam loose,
annoying the bejabbers out of non-cat people. It's easy to see in what
direction we're "evolving" & the same sorts of neighbors who helped pass
laws so your rooster won't wake them up in the morning, so your dog won't
be unfenced or unleashed, so you can't have a pony or a llama or sweet
little jenny inside the city limits, so that even your safely caged pet
python is illegal in a growing number of places -- does anyone REALLY
think this same spreading attitude against animals will permit cats to
roam at will for a great many years yet to come?

To me it is strange that the ferret, which is the third-most-popular pet
mammal (other than rodents) after dogs & cats, is an illegal pet in
California. The pet skunks I cared for as a child, if I had them now, I
could be arrested, & my pets destroyed, if I had them today -- even such
domestic strains as the white, albino white, & chocoalte skunks raised in
southern skunkeries & hand-raised as the sweetest pets imaginable are no
an exception here in Washington. Nowadays increasing breeds of dogs are
being made illegal because of a few irresponsible owners turning public
sentiment even against Man's Best Friend. The way things are going, cat
lovers will have to count themselves lucky if cats are even still LEGAL a
few more years down the line! They carry more diseases to people, some of
them fatal, than do dogs, so just think of the excuses that can be made to
ban them.

This indicates the INEVITABLE future for cats, too. In fact indoor cats
that have no liberty to carouse neighborhoods live much longer lives than
outdoor cats, & it WILL be argued that letting cats run free is very cruel
& their shortened lives prove it.

I sure don't say it's a good thing that such restrictions are coming. I
really don't mind the neighbors' cats visiting me, never understood why
the occasional cat turn gets some non-cat people up in arms. But it's a
fact, the days of the free-range kitty is going to go the way of the
free-range family dog or even the free-range human being. Animal lovers
will say its to protect the life of the cat, others will say it's because
letting cats shit in neighbors' gardens is a public health issue, or that
letting cats roam about killing whatever little bit is left of native
fauna, particularly songbirds, is criminally irresponsible. Someday --
sooner than they may right now believe -- cat owners will risk fines,
arrest, or imprisonment, as well as the "putting down" of the kitties for
scratching a neighbor kid (a greatrer source of disease than dogbites, &
happens more often too), or for being off leash.

Here are a couple cool websites about cat leashing; you might as well
start preparing now:
http://freeairpress.com/Cats/leash.html
http://www.peoriahs.org/catleash.html

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/