There are more ways than one to decommission a cat
There is one pressing and even crucial issue which successive governments have refused to address, perhaps through a failure of political will, or simply out of cowardice. And yet not a day goes by without all of us asking the same question: what on earth shall we do about all the cats? They are self-evidently a problem more injurious and much more numerous than a few Slovak gypsies queuing at the gates of Dover with their fraudulent benefit books in hand. Cats excite the political consciousness rather more avidly than, say, top-up fees or foundation hospitals. And yet our political masters say nothing and do even less. One or two MPs are even signed up to sinister pro-cat pressure groups, such as the Cat Anti-Defamation League and what have you. The rest of us are forced to sit and watch as these animals kill an estimated 40 million wild birds and mammals every year and then, having done so, defecate in noisome curlicues in the back garden.
We are prohibited by both social convention and legislation from doing anything that might seriously deter the cats from engaging in their unsolicited and disgusting behaviour. Take them down to the river in a burlap sack, adequately weighted with a couple of building bricks, and you'll have the RSPCA and the police around in seconds. Shooting them in broad daylight is, for similar reasons, out of the question, as the late humorist Spike Milligan discovered when he took a pot shot at a couple of tabbies that had been hunting birds on his land. And infrared nightsights are prohibitively expensive. What we are instead expected to do is sit back and smile indulgently.
Killing and shitting is part of a cat's natural behaviour, so the argument goes. We should therefore not judge them too harshly. This is nonsense. One would not apply the same argument to human beings, nor, indeed, to a multitude of other, more agreeable creatures which have been relentlessly persecuted over the last few decades.
Take mink, for example. These brave escapers from our now outlawed fur farms have voracious appetites and are thought to have reduced the population of indigenous water voles to a quarter of what it once was. And so they are shot whenever they are seen. But I'm not sure that the mink are guilty as charged. Recently the custodians of a nature reserve near Swindon spent a lot of money ensuring that their patch of land was entirely mink-proof. But still the resident water voles were killed — and the conservationists discovered, of course, that cats were to blame. Trouble was, there was nothing they could do about it.
I suppose one would swallow the 'natural behaviour' argument if cats, like mink, were truly living in the wild. But they're not. They're killing a bunch of chaffinches or a field mouse every day and then returning home for a plate of Whiskas, a bowl of milk and a nice warm bed by the radiator. This is fraudulent behaviour. It is the equivalent of claiming benefits while being engaged in full-time work.
The whole business has begun to exercise me even more than usual because I am about to move house — to a place with a larger garden than the one I enjoy at present. And so the battle with the cats will be rejoined on an epic scale. What I intend to do now is share with you some of the legal and less legal methods I have devised in the past in order to keep my garden free of these infernal animals. There are two approaches: low-level, during which the cat is not injured, or at least not seriously injured, and extreme-level, during which the cat is either maimed or killed. Only the lowlevel approach should be attempted during daylight hours: cats have their besotted agents everywhere and there is nothing the press likes more than a story about some fiend who removes a cat's paws with a pair of secateurs. I assume you do not wish for that sort of publicity, no matter how justified you may have felt in undertaking your action. So prosecute the extreme-level approach only after sundown — a time which is, fortuitously, rich with cats.
During the day you can, for example, shoot water at them with those giant squirtguns much beloved of children. They have a range of about 30 metres and the jet is quite powerful. However, even a direct hit in the face will deter them only temporarily, so modifications are necessary. Food or industrial dyes may persuade the owner of the cat that it's a bad idea to let it loose on your land; also, other cats, espying a bright yellow tabby prowling around the neighbourhood, may band together and kick its head in. Cats are notoriously racist. Boiling water, however, is out: the guns are made of a deceptively flimsy plastic.
There are two much-discussed methods of persuading cats not to trespass on your property. The first, and most expensive, is to order bags of tiger or lion manure from London Zoo and scatter the ordure around traditional cat-entry points — the top of the garden shed, for example. Cats are not the brightest of creatures, but they do possess sufficient acumen to avoid areas where lions or tigers might be in residence. If you are skint, you can manufacture your own Big Cat Deterrent. Urinate into a beaker, preferably one which you do not habitually use for tea or coffee, and add to the frothing liquid quantities of Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper and garlic granules. Scatter the mixture around your front gate. The cats will sniff a little gingerly and very quickly beat a retreat, convinced that some fierce and exotic creature is about to pounce on them.
At night, more punitive and enjoyable action can be taken, but you must be patient. A car battery can generate a good deal of electricity, certainly enough to fry a cat through a strand of wire concealed beneath the garden gate. But be sure to switch off the device when the toddlers awake or the postman does his rounds.
More fun still is a cat pit, which I tried to patent several years ago. First, plant a catnip plant, to which cats are unaccountably attracted. Next to it, dig a pit concealed with straw, leaves, loose soil. In no time at all the pit will be full, at which point you simply cover it over and plant the catnip somewhere else. And dig another pit.
The obvious catch-all answer, of course, is to buy a dog — a big, fierce, cat-eating dog, such as a Rottweiler or a Staffordshire pit bull. I realise that this is a difficult course of action, socially, for many Spectator readers and I daresay a Labrador, properly trained, could do the job quite well.
It's not a pleasant business, is it? But what are we to do when our politicians seem so averse to taking the appropriate action?
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