Cats can’t fend for themselves outdoors
The Hawaii County Council recently recommended passing a bill to make it illegal to feed feral or stray animals on county-owned property.
Readers should know that cats — socialized to humans or not — cannot fend for themselves outdoors.
Being fed does not protect them from the many hardships they inevitably face, including suffering prolonged and painful deaths from untreated injuries and illnesses, being hit by cars and attacked by dogs, succumbing to weather extremes, and other cruel fates.
For example, on Oahu, a group that had sterilized and re-abandoned homeless cats at a parking lot found five of them dead, “with suspicious wounds.” A sixth was found injured and had to be euthanized. A seventh was later found that had “apparently been shot through the head.”
In Honolulu, the decapitated body of a cat was found floating in the water at a harbor, and the “bodies of seven additional cats, each with suspicious injuries, were found nearby. Officials noted that many of the deceased cats were located next to piles of food on the ground.”
These are just a few cases that have made headlines recently — most are never reported.
Shelters must stop refusing to accept cats — a tactic that many facilities with “no-kill” policies use to avoid having to count these animals in their statistics.
And people who feed cats must take responsibility for them by taking them to well-run shelters or into their own homes, where they can receive the care and protection they need.
Teresa Chagrin
Animal care and control issues manager,
PETA
With Trump, democracy ‘is still going strong’
I’m very glad to have voted for Donald Trump!
We see the benefits from tariffs and a closed border as well as banning of men in women’s sports and many other things.
If any of you have any doubts about things, go to www.whitehouse.gov. There are daily updates for full transparency.
Democracy is not dead at all. We had a constitutionally held, free and fair democratic election. It was not contested by Kamala Harris nor anyone.
Democracy in this constitutional republic of ours is still going strong.
Mahalo to all who are not allowing the island to become the riot-torn mainland.
Allen Russell
Hilo