Ok so I go out, get the mail yesterday and what do I find? A reminder to renew my dogs tags, six months after I'd just bought a year long tag.

Yet, while I"m out there it occurres to me. Why is it that as a dog owner I have too have tags for my dogs.

I have to keep my dogs on a leash, or in my fenced in yard.

Yet, the neighbors (all around me) can have cats which have no tags, (no requirements in the law for it) and which run around the entire neighborhood scott free.

I can see zero reason for dog owners to be burdened with having such regulations on them.

Cats can be just as dangerous to a person's health, as a dog can. More so when you consider some of the diseases a cat can give you, just with a scratch, that dogs don't carry/transmit to humans.

Yet cat owners can let their "members of their family" run rampant wherever they wish too.

In fact, with the winter season on us, why is it a crime to leave a dog outside in the elements, yet A-ok for a person to leave their cat out?

Yeah it's a little tiny, gripe, in the big picture. But in a time when our nation is discussing overall general fairness and equitable treatment of citizens under the law.

I think it's time the playing field were leveled. It's time to start making cat owners have tags for their cats.

Time to start giving cat owners tickets if they just let their feline run rampant.

Time to start holding them accountable for it, if their cat damages another citizen's property.

Just as any dog owner is, if you ask me.

I contacted our county/city animal control once about these feral's we have running all over the place.

Now think about this, we have one, that has a new litter twice a year. Four to six of the little suckers, now multiply that by the years I"ve lived here and seen this. (Going on seven now).

Yeah that's whole hell of a lot of feral cats, having more feral cats, to make even more feral cats.

I contacted animal Control once about it.

What was their solution. When you read it, you'll be shocked.

The county animal control said that they have a program for dealing with feral cats. Here is how it works.

The citizen, who has a feral cat problem, can go up to the local county shelter, pay them 35 bucks to rent a cat trap. (yeah it's 35 per trap so if you need more it gets costly just for the traps right off the bat) Then once they have set up and trapped the feral cat/cats. They want for the citizen to then take the cat/cats to the shelter, pay 80-90 bucks out of their pocket, to have the thing spayed or neutered, Yes that's 80-90 per cat, and then have the citizen take the feral cat back, and release it to run free again.

Their reasoning? Well the cats are territorial, so once they're fixed they wont be adding to the feral cat population, but being territorial, they'll drive other ferals out.

I kid ya's not, that is the answer. They gave me.

I know, I know makes no sense to me either.

But I do have an idea that might make a dent in the feral cat population which is a problem in lots of major cities believe it or not.

Maybe if we started applying the very same sort of laws to cat owners, that we do to dog owners, then we wouldn't have such a problem with feral felines running around our city here. At the very least, if not to cut down on ferals running rampant all over the place, we should be, simply as a matter of fairness in our society.

Regards,

Sick and tired of having to stop in the middle of the street blocking traffic for a cat belonging to irresponsible people.