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Let's take the emotion down a notch on this matter of feral cats.

A vote during Wisconsin Conservation Congress meetings on Tuesday does not mean there will be a state hunting season for cats.

Put aside for the moment that the governor opposes shooting cats and that the issue is so controversial that smart money has the Legislature dodging this one.

The voting that occurred in the state's counties asks that the state merely put feral cats in the category of nuisance opossums and skunks. It is but a preliminary step.

The Conservation Congress, which advises the state Department of Natural Resources, still has to take up the matter. And if it passes on this "advice" to the DNR, the Legislature would still have to act to change animal cruelty laws, which now protect cats, feral or otherwise.

Still, in case the smart money is wrong and these bodies do ultimately act on the issue, it's legitimate to ask whether this definition of "feral" that was voted on is, in fact, overly broad.

The people voting were considering a measure that asks that Wisconsinites be allowed to kill cats not under the control of an owner or that aren't wearing collars.

OK, but does this needlessly endanger Scruffy the house cat? Will someone trying to deal with feral cats shoot first and check for the collar later? And does the problem of feral cats outweigh the risk posed to pets?

Proponents of killing feral cats have pointed to research done in Wisconsin that they've interpreted to say that cats are an undue menace to bird populations.

The authors of the research have written in published work that a Wisconsin "free-ranging" cat population of between 1.4 million and 2 million may be killing 38.7 million to 219 million birds, not including predation by urban cats. But they also wrote that these numbers represent "best guesses."

Opponents dispute the figures. They say that cats are more apt to be scavengers and rodent specialists and that a small percentage of their diets actually consist of birds.

Other questions arise.

If the feral cat population declines significantly, does the rodent population explode? Though cats are not native species, have they been here long enough to be a crucial underpinning of ecological balance?

We urge the DNR to find out so that if the Legislature is determined to act, it does so based on fact rather than emotion.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:29 AM