Australian snake catcher shows graphic image of cat killed by python to teach a lesson

The image has been edited (cat pixelated) to make it more acceptable. This is a good story to kick off on this website. It is very much about the animal-human relationship and it comes from Australia which is a cauldron of argument about how to protect native species.

It’s a country where millions of kangaroos are shot by Australians each year, at night out of sight, and where they want to kill millions of feral cats in the same way or indeed in any way because they say that they kill precious native species. Ironically, on this continent native species are becoming more and more precious due to expanding commercial enterprises i.e. humans are, as usual, pushing wild animals off the planet.

In this particular story a snake catcher working in Noosa, Eastern Australia, Luke Huntley, posted, on his Facebook page, pictures of pythons which have killed domestic cats.

PYTHON KILLS CAT!!! WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP YOUR CAT INSIDE!!!! The photo on the left was from a home in Noosa today where the residents cat got too curious and was eaten by this python. The one on the right is me a year ago with a similar situation. If you love your cat don’t let it out. There’s cars, dogs, people and snakes that can kill them. So keep them in and get an outdoor enclosure for them. Not to mention when you keep them in you’re saving thousands of native animals a year! We have such a beautiful country and our wildlife is precious. Let’s keep it that way. Keep your loved family cat inside and safe and also protect our wildlife 😊 everyone wins 🐍🐱

In forceful language and using graphic images he tries to educate Australians to keep their domestic cats inside the home and inside a confinement fence around their backyards. He makes the usual arguments. We have seen them all before to be honest. You will see similar arguments rehearsed in America.

He is saying that there are hazards out there for domestic cats and one of them is the python. Of course the main hazard is the human with a rifle butt I won’t go into that.

You can see his post below. As a consequence of his post, people believed that he was a cat hater who wanted to shock cat owners into changing their habits. He was criticised. He was taken aback by the criticism. In addition his post attracted cat haters who simply want to see domestic cats flattened by vehicles and who are happy to see them eaten by snakes. He didn’t like this and so posted a video explaining his intentions.

I’m writing this at the time of Brexit in the UK. Brexit has caused deep division within society and amongst Parliamentary representatives. There is complete deadlock. It’s a logjam. A similar state of affairs exists in Australia concerning how to deal with feral cats and (at a lesser level) how cat lovers and owners should look after their cat companions.

Feral cats in particular polarise people’s views. The people of Australia put them there. People have a responsibility towards them which includes treating them humanely. The authorities are desperate. They want to eradicate them and see no way of removing them from the environment humanely. In essence, the problem has become too large and too difficult to handle. The authorities have dreamt up various means to kill them but these methods present hazards to other animals and they are inhumane.

This is a massive animal-human relationship problem. For my part, the only way to deal with it is humanely and to put sufficient resources into the problem so that it can be resolved through a huge TNR program across the country which takes place for a decade. That should manage feral cats in Australia and nobody could argue that it was done inhumanely.