As a relatively recent transplant to Los Angeles, I am dealing with information that I had never really considered before. Out here, people's pets, if left in their backyards, tend to... well, get eaten. By coyotes. This may not be a problem in downtown or anything, but head out to the hills, or to Pasadena or the outskirts of San Diego, and folks know that if kitty don't come home, kitty has probably become Wille E. Dessert.

Now it sucks if your cat (or dog) gets eaten by coyotes, there's no question about it. So what are the options? The obvious solution is to keep your pets inside when they aren't being directly supervised by large, gun-wielding humans. But if that's the only solution I had to offer, I wouldn't bother writing this, right?

I have a better idea. It won't replace responsible pet ownership, but it can work in tandem with it to prevent excessive feline casualties. The answer? Live bait. Sacrificial lambs. Or kitties, in this case.

That's fucking-a-right. All those poor cats in the pound, sheltered animals with no homes that are about to get a lethal injection and a free trip to the incinerator? Let's spay/neuter them and dump them in the wild for a free coyote snack.

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting we throw all pets to the wild, but if we're gonna kill an animal anyway, why waste the meat? Yeah, yeah, it's cruel. Waaaaah. WAKE UP TO NATURE, FOLKS. There's a REASON they call it a dog-eat-dog world, and we may as well admit it's a coyote-eat-kitty world, too.

See, the happy, well-fed coyotes will then have no reason to come down the mountain and eat YOUR pet! It's a little gruesome, but it's the right thing to do, because currently the kitty ends up just as dead and no one gets fed! And if the little kitty manages to escape? Well good for Fluffy. It's been spayed, it can't make the problem worse by spreading its feline genes all over the place, and it can live out its life as long as it can escape the fangs of the wild.

Hey, that's a good slogan! "If Kitty gets dead then Wolfie gets fed!"

Who's with me?

© 2001, Michael Yanovich. www.mentalsnot.com