In other words, we saw balance. Nature taking care of things. So, outdoor rats and mice were fine with us, so long as cats were allowed to roam at large.
We brought a young cat with us when we moved to Magnolia from Turnersville -- Inky.
Inky had adopted us in Turnersville -- we had not adopted her. She had always been semi-wild, living half "on the street," half in-doors. As a consequence, she was extremely street-wise and tough, but she also loved human beings -- she never bit or scratched a human, ever. She loved me like crazy. We were constantly harassing each other to entertain each other. I'd be studying a map on the floor. Inky would see this, sneak up, and DIVE with lightning speed UNDER the map, scaring the pee out me. I would then grab her THROUGH the map, and Inky would wrestle back.
If Inky heard Rise` coming into the room, however, she would jump up onto all fours, and walk off with dignity, tail high in the air.
Inky was an amazing hunter. She killed thousands of rats and mice in her life -- and also many mocking birds, squirrels, and rabbits, to tell the truth.
Frequently, new laws are adopted at the municipal level because it becomes "fashionable" to do so. Though I was off Council in Magnolia when so-called "cat leash laws" became fashionable, I was the Republican Municipal Chair when Magnolia's "cat leash law" came up for a vote in the Summer of 1990. I opposed the proposed ordinance, making fun of it by calling it "the wild mouse and rat multiplication law." I also predicted that the increased mouse and rat population would increase mouse and rat droppings inside walls, causing roach infestations to explode. Complaints about "that strong pee smell cats leave behind in the garden" carried the day, however. The law passed in September, 1990.
In town after town in Camden County, the "cat leash laws" "worked," exactly as expected. "That strong pee smell" outside was less frequently encountered, but we also began to see wild mice and rats -- really BIG rats, who now had plenty of time to grow up, unaccosted by neighborhood cats -- scurrying everywhere.
Their population exploded in the towns adopting the new "cat leash law." "We ... we ... we j-j-j-just c-c-c-can't explain it," political leaders across the county griped.
http://articles.philly.com/1993-06-18/news/25972757_1_rats-exterminators-rodents
Our family didn't have the heart to obey the law when it came to Inky, to be perfectly honest. A leash would have killed her, after a life of freedom. So, always making sure that Inky had her shots, we left Inky free until she died. She brought home some really gargantuan dead rats, during her final years.
I asked the County rodent control program representative what he used for rats, when I saw him in Somerdale, once. "Oh," he said, "We can't leave out traps. So, we POISON them."
I asked, "Do you know what the problem with the rodent poisons is?"
"No," he responded, "What?"
"The rats and mice eat the poison," I responded, "crawl into their homes in the walls of people's residences, and die, and people wonder why their homes suddenly have a cadaver smell they can't get rid of. And the roaches in the walls suddenly have rat and mouse cadavers to eat, along with rodent droppings."
So, the main achievement of the "cat leash laws" in Camden County was to cause the mouse and rat and roach populations to explode, while it replaced "that strong pee smell" in people's gardens with a strong cadaver smell in their walls !
One of these days, the "cat leash laws" are going to un-leash a problem of a totally different sort in Camden County: As global warming causes mouse and rat populations, unhindered by roaming cats, to explode even more, so that more and more the walls of people's homes become filled with mouse and rat droppings, finally someone from the American Southwest is going to bring hantavirus -- an ebola-like hemorrhagic disease -- with him, and it's going to explode here, as the mice and rats in our walls become carriers, and many will die.
Hantavirus hemorrhagic rash turning
skin and eyes red
And our politicians, who will have caused the problem, will wring their hands and say, "Who knew?"
In the early Middle Ages, cats were regarded as evil -- frequently as receptacles for the Devil, probably because male cats gathering around female cats in heat behave downright spooky. (I've seen a group of about 8 males gathered in a circle, serenading Inky, before we had her spaded. I saw one big tomcat standing tall on his hind legs, looking at me with wild eyes, meowing in a way that almost sounded like talk, probably to scare me away from a female in heat in the house nearby.)
However, later in the Middle Ages, when it dawned on the people in Europe that cats allowed to roam free wiped out rat populations, which in turn wiped out the spread of Plague, cats became the heroes of European society, and they even began to appear in stained glass windows in Europe's cathedrals !
We really need to learn from our European ancestors, on this issue.
Get rid of the "cat leash laws" now, now, now.
Or don't be surprised when Magnolia is quarantined due to an outbreak of hantavirus someday.
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