Earlier this week the American Bird Conservancy launched a series of short public service announcements created in collaboration with the Hillsborough Animal Health Foundation, “calling on cat owners to care for their pets using ‘Cats Indoors’ approaches that are demonstrably better for cats, better for birds, and better for people.”
That same day, on the organization’s Facebook page, ABC declared, “We love cats! That’s why we want to keep them inside.”
Love?
This, remember, is the same organization that’s been opposed to TNR since 1997. Over the past 17 years, ABC has taken every opportunity to misrepresent rigorous science, as well as promote—and even produce—junk science on the subject.
Among HAHF’s more notable efforts to undermine TNR efforts was its delusional AWAKE! “proposal,” the provisions of which included prohibitions on any new colonies in Hillsborough County and an 8,000-foot buffer zone around “schools, human food sources (groceries, restaurants, etc.), daycare centers or hospitals… public parklands or environmentally sensitive areas.”
Cats kept at the county’s two sanctuaries were, under their “plan,” to be housed, 10–25 cats each, in 12’ x 8’ “garden sheds” for which “electricity would likely not be required.”
This partnership between ABC and HAHF should come as no surprise, then—two organizations that have demonstrated, time and time again, a say-and-do-anything approach to attacking TNR, as well as the people and organizations that support it.
And we’re expected to believe that they love cats?
If this is love, bring on the haters.