cording to the laws of the Common- 
wealth I cannot take him on state land 
without a special permit, nor can I even 
exercise him in the cover during the 
closed season. But my neighbors can 
keep all the cats they please (and they 
do), without costing them a penny of 
tax, allowing them to run at large 
wheresoever they desire, although they 
kill my chickens and destroy the small 
game I take so much pains to raise and 
protect. 
| S there any justice in this? Is this 
game conservation? Can anyone, 
even the state, justly claim they are try- 
ing to conserve wild life and let these 
cats go on killing every night and day 
in the year? 
“I trow not. 
And there is no earthly reason why 
this should be so. For the control of 
the cat situation is no harder than the 
solution of the dog problem. 
There is no question but that without 
a stiff dog license, fairly well enforced, 
this entire state soon would be overrun 
with half wild and homeless dogs, just 
as are the streets of most Asiatic cities. 
There would be mongrel curs every- 
where—half starved dogs hunting night 
and day in the fields and forests. This 
is just exactly what happened years 
ago to a lesser degree of course, and 
led to a serious legislative effort to 
control the number of dogs, just as soon 
as these half starved curs began to kill 
the farmers’ sheep. We all admit that 
this dog tax and control is a good thing. 
There are too many mongrel dogs as 
it is! But, remember, just the same 
terrible outcries and loud protests and 
angry howls rent the very heavens from 
every dog lover and dog owner when 
this dog law was first put into effect. 
Now cats kill more dollars’ worth of 
chickens than dogs ever did of sheep, 
and why not some effective method to 
control them? 
Why not, indeed? 
HAT loud roar in the offing is tne 
old, old “rat-and-mouse” argu- 
ment. “If it wasn’t for our faithful 
cats the rats would carry us off!”” My 
collie dog kills just as many rats as 
lots of cats, and I am glad of it, but 
I have to pay his dog tax just the same. 
Now I live in the country, on a farm, 
where there are rats and imice and I 
speak from experience. I do not keep 
a cat, nor do I allow one on the place. 
If one comes prowling around here it 
does so at grave personal risk! And 
yet I have no more rats than mice, (in 
fact not as many) as most farms where 
there are from two to twenty cats. It 
is a fact! I have two little penny 
mouse traps and for years and years 
these little traps, in a few nights, have 
removed every mouse (that I know of), 
from this big house. The numbers of 
rats and mice, like all other animals, 
depends upon the food supply available. 
All the cats in the township will not 
keep down the rats where there is an 
abundance of food, such as unthreshed 
grain in the barn. Traps and poison are 
necessary. With a couple of good traps 
I can catch more rats in a week than 
a cat will get in a year. A batch of 
poison will destroy more rats in a night 
than forty cats will catch in a lifetime. 
Who dares dispute this? 
In spite of all the millions of cats at 
large, if it wasn’t for traps and poison, 
mice and rats would overrun the state 
in a few years, or even months— 
principally because their food is so 
plentiful and easily available. 
S a matter of fact the rat-and- 
mouse hunting of all cats has been 
greatly exaggerated. Well fed cats will 
not bother to catch many rats and mice. 
And if they are hungry they will catch 
anything! There are many other wild 
thing's so much easier to catch than rats 
and mice, which live under floors and 
in partitions and other inaccessible 
places. 
How many times I have heard people 
say, “Why, my cats never kill birds.” 
Maybe so, but I don’t believe it. 
Cats fool you! 
Because they lay around asleep all 
day don’t imagine they are not busy 
nights. The house eat, like all the cat 
family, is really.a night animal. It is 
natural for them to drowse away the 
day but when night comes they are ac- 
tive, prowling and hunting. In one 
short night drive last summer, of only 
twenty-five miles, I counted nearly 
thirty cats hunting in the fields 
close to the roadside. Heaven only 
knows how many more there were out 
in the fields beyond the range of my 
headlights. All over the state, all over 
the country, that very same night, mil- 
lions of cats were hunting! 
The old fashioned “barn cat” is the 
worst offender of all. Half fed they 
will kill anything, including a full 
grown rabbit. They have to hunt to 
live and, naturally, only a small per- 
centage of their kill is mice and rats. 
Cats are nice—they are the best of 
pets. But why let our love for them 
run away with our better judgment? 
Don’t we love our dogs just as much? 
Fae there are cats, really the nicest 
of all, such as the Angora and 
Persian, which are not so much on the 
hunt. If we must keep cats why not 
these kinds? 
The house cat has few enemies—dogs, 
foxes, wildcats, large owls. They seem 
to be strangely immune to disease, No | 
unavoidable and uncurable distemper 
sweeps over the land killing off the cats 
as it does our dogs. They usually live 
to a ripe old age, bringing into the 
world large litters at frequent inter- 
vals. 
The only remedy for this cat nuisance 
is a stiff tax on cats, the same as on 
dogs, and a united effort to reduce the 
eat supply. Every sportsman, every 
game club, every nature lover and wild 
life protective organization should raise 
their voices and make so much noise 
that state legislatures and conservation 
commissions cannot fail to hear. Put 
the cat family under the same license 
system as dogs. The machinery is all 
there, make it work. Lower the tax 
for emasculated males and spayed fe- 
males, they stay at home and behave 
themselves mostly. Make folk take out 
a “kennel license” to raise a flock of 
kittens. Let all unlicensed and un- 
taxed cats be killed at sight. We do 
this with dogs, why not with cats? 
Bs: us make our pet cats pets and 
keep them from hunting and de- 
stroying, from breeding large families 
which no one wants, which are generally 
“dropped” along the roadside nights to 
hunt their living or find a chance home. 
Let us decrease this ever growing and 
destructive menace to our birds and 
beasts by imposing licenses and fines, 
by utilizing the same methods and ma- 
chinery already active to control the 
dog situation. 
Every hunter knows that cats “go 
wild,” thousands of them taking to the 
woods and fields every summer to live 
on birds and small game until winter 
drives them into the villages and cities 
to live from garbage cans or into old 
barns. These should be promptly shot 
at sight. And all you who love the 
birds and beasts, who are seriously try- 
ing to preserve our wild life, let your 
“no trespass and no hunting” signs in- 
clude this greatest killer of them all. 

