Animals: Cat Control?

An Angora cat which climbed a Manhattan tree last week for the first time in its life and then did not know how to get down caused police much trouble and cat-haters much glee.

The Angora’s owner is one Harold Mallard. He carried it across busy streets into a park where it is the cat’s habit to stroll at the end of a-leash. The cat saw a squirrel, leaped from Mr. Mallard’s arms, chased the squirrel 30 ft. up a poplar. The squirrel ran down. But the cat feared to follow, yowled until police came with ladders.

The incident delighted the International Cat Society, which met in Manhattan that evening. The Society wants to kill the

78,000,000 stray cats in the U. S., to have the remaining 42,000,000 others licensed. New York and California laws permit the shooting of cats. Coral Gables, Fla. requires the belling of household cats. No community requires licensing.

Mr. Mallard’s practice of controlling his Angora by a leash, a common practice in Manhattan, had the Society’s approval. His domesticated Angora’s chasing the squirrel was a pat example of the Society’s strongest argument—that cats are killers. It suggested better than words the late John Burrough’s contention that each cat in the U. S. kills on the average 50 birds a year. And it made unnecessary a photograph the society sought to take last week of a house cat stalking a stuffed bird rubbed with stale fish.