A Non-PC Solution to Cozumel's feral cats

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El Graduado

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Cat Infographic.jpg


My wife said I need to run this by ScubaBoard before I pursue it any further.

I do not know what to do about the feral dog problem on Cozumel, but I think I have found a solution for the feral cats. In China, there is a big demand for cat pelts to use in the fake fur and plush toy industries. I found a company in Shantou, China, that is paying $2.43 USD for cat pelts. I figure I will start my cat-pelt enterprise by purchasing a couple of small pick-up trucks and mounting some chicken-wire cages in the beds, hiring a driver and a catcher equipped with a tranquilizer dart gun and big net for each truck. They will spend the first few months driving around the island, picking up strays and bringing them to our cat breeding ranch just outside town.

As soon as we start gathering the cats, we can start breeding rats for their food. A female Norway rat (those are the really big ones) can have six litters a year, with up to sixteen baby rats to a litter. A young female Norway rat can have her first litter at six weeks of age, so we could have a veritable unending supply of rats to use as cat-food, at virtually no cost. Later, we will skin the cats and feed their carcasses to the rats. This would also help to avoid any garbage-pick-up charges from the city. The cats can have four to six kittens per litter and three litters per year. If we only skin the males and let the females breed 20 times before we skin them, we could have a breeding stock of around 10,000 cats at the end of the second year. I figure five full-time cat-skinners can skin around 1,200 cats in eight hours, if they peel them like you do frog legs. At $2.43 USD per skin, that’s almost $3,000.00 USD per day. Of course, this number will rise exponentially since each female would be replicating herself a minimum of 80 times before we skinned her. At some point, we’d need to find a market larger than China. Once the cat-skin ranch is operating at full production, we can start working on cross-breeding cats with the invasive Boa constrictors on the island, since these snakes shed their own skin. If the cross-breed is viable, we could save on the wages we pay the cat-skinners!
 
Reminds me of Swift's, "A Modest Proposal."
 
" I do not know what to do about the feral dog population on Cozumel."

I like the idea of self-skinning cats. Are you sure Boas are an invasive species? They are found all over Mexico. They have every right to be on Cozumel. They keep the rodent population in check, and are exceedingly beautiful creatures, completely harmless. I've seen grown men act like little girls around snakes, but i'm sure there are none of that cowardly breed among our dauntless scuba diving community.

I'm not sure why you don't know what to do with the feral dog population. Dog meat is highly esteemed in Asia. If you're shipping cat skins to China, why not pack dog meat in the same container? You might even develop a local demand for dog meat in Cozumel. Lionfish and fido fillets would make a nice change up from surf and turf while getting rid of two genuinely invasive species.
 
Are you sure Boas are an invasive species? They are found all over Mexico.
One specie, Boa imperator - Wikipedia, is native to the mainland, but not the island. No boas were found on the island until 1971 when some were brought in for a movie: The Boa Constrictors of Cozumel

They are edible tho, unlike Florida pythons which show a high level of mercury. Chef Serves Eight Courses of Boa Constrictor - Including Salad
 
" Are you sure Boas are an invasive species?

Yep, boas are definitely invasive to Cozumel. I touched on their introduction in my last book, The True History of Cozumel. I am now putting the finishing touches on my next book, The Natural History of Cozumel. I also will mention the way the boas were purposely released by a film crew's animal wrangler in 1971 in that new book.

There are lots of snakes that are common on the mainland that are not present on Cozumel. Whims of nature?

Your dog meat idea is not bad, but unless we open a cannery (like Cozumel used to have for lobster and turtles) we would need to contract refrigerated shipping containers, which would make it too costly!

The dog isn't invasive. The Maya raised dogs on Cozumel; the xoloitzcuintli, otherwise known as a Mexican Hair-less, and the tlalchichi (techichi in Mayan), a smaller, hirsute variety introduced into Maya culture by the Toltecs. Mentions of these canines are also included in my Natural History of Cozumel.
 
Yep, boas are definitely invasive to Cozumel. I touched on their introduction in my last book, The True History of Cozumel. I am now putting the finishing touches on my next book, The Natural History of Cozumel. I also will mention the way the boas were purposely released by a film crew's animal wrangler in 1971 in that new book.

There are lots of snakes that are common on the mainland that are not present on Cozumel. Whims of nature?

Your dog meat idea is not bad, but unless we open a cannery (like Cozumel used to have for lobster and turtles) we would need to contract refrigerated shipping containers, which would make it too costly!

The dog isn't invasive. The Maya raised dogs on Cozumel; the xoloitzcuintli, otherwise known as a Mexican Hair-less, and the tlalchichi (techichi in Mayan), a smaller, hirsute variety introduced into Maya culture by the Toltecs. Mentions of these canines are also included in my Natural History of Cozumel.
The Maya and the Toltecs are themselves an invasive species. People are latecomers to the Western Hemisphere. Not long after people began crossing the Bering Strait all sorts of indigenous animals and birds began vanishing, a process that continues still. I think the Cozumel Fox is the only canine native to the island, and I believe they are nearly extinct. The previous absence of Boas on Cozumel can be explained in many ways. Were there Boas on the Island a thousand years ago? 10,000 years ago? There is an excellent book, 'Island Biology' by David Lack. It examines the unique mechanisms that affect island creatures, and the reasons some flourish and others vanish. I'm sure you agree that the natural history of Cozumel is not limited to the very recent and brief period of human habitation. I know Cozumel is rather low lying and consequently subject to marine intrusion. Were there tropical forests on Cozumel before people arrived? To what extent has the presence of humans changed Cozumel from what it was only a few thousand years ago into what it is now? I've spent a great deal of time in the Caribbean over the past half century. These days I enjoy visiting Dominica above all other islands because so much of the island's original flora and fauna has managed to survive.
 
If you catch all the stray cats what will they make tacos out of? Or do you plan to sell the meat to the taco vendors?
 
You ever try to herd cats? They tend to squirt off in different directions. Maybe keep the tranq gun around til they learn.
 

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