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Bird feeders shouldn't be cat snack bars

By RANDY COHEN New York Times Syndicate

Sunday, July 13, 2003

Q. Our backyard bird feeders predate our cat, who has turned into quite a hunter. Is it inhumane to fill a bird feeder when the possibility of attack exists?

A. It is inhumane to use a feeder as a snack bar for cats, luring songbirds to their doom. Indeed, those firebrands at the National Audubon Society assert that if you use a feeder, you must never let your cat outside.

John Bianchi, a spokesman for the group, notes that cats kill millions of birds every year and says that there's nothing natural about it: "Domestic cats are not wild animals," he says. "They were bred to hunt and kill even when they are not hungry, to protect granaries."

The National Audubon Society advocates that cats always be kept indoors, even if you have no feeder -- not just to protect birds but for the cats' own good.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in England takes a more moderate line. A spokeswoman, Sarah Niemann, suggests feeders should be positioned so that a cat cannot lie in wait, unseen by the birds, and cats should sometimes be kept indoors -- "when the birds are most vulnerable, at least an hour before sunset and an hour after sunrise."

The society's call for peaceful coexistence is reasonable.

Q. I don't check my supermarket coupons to see which are past the expiration date. The store's "official" policy is to decline expired coupons, but, as I've observed, the checker can manually override the "blip" that sounds when she scans an expired coupon, thus giving me credit for it. This leads me to conclude that the "policy" is left to the discretion of the checker.

Is it unethical for me to knowingly present an expired coupon to the checker, in effect asking that it be honored anyway?

A. A glib bit of rationalizing, and thrifty, too. And I like your notion that this bit of checkout sloppiness represents something as grand as a policy.

It is as unethical to knowingly present an expired coupon as it would be to pass counterfeit money.

Here's how you ask if an expired coupon can be honored: You ask. Out loud.

How diligently you must scrutinize those expiration dates is open to debate, but if your intention here is deceptive, your conduct is unethical.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:59 AM