Jay Yager's reply to "Cat Jokes"

Jay Yager behind the camera, Belle River, Ontario, 2006.

Jay Yager wrote to me after reading my blog on Cat Jokes. With his permission I'm posting his response because it has the word vulture in it.

From Jay:
I read your piece about cat jokes on your blog. While I agree that such jokes are abusive I do think that there's another big issue involved. I recently read Alan Weisman's book "The World Without Us" which elaborates on my longstanding view that human overpopulation is wrecking the planet. An important part of that condition is the parallel overpopulation of dogs and cats and in the case of the latter the serious reduction in population of birds. I certainly don't advocate cruelty to these household pets but neither do I subscribe to the large scale favoring of some species over others. A couple months ago when Leda and Mark were here a turkey vulture landed in our next door neighbors yard and was eying one of the wild cats that live in the woods around our place. Leda ran out and chased the vulture away, a seemingly humanitarian reaction. My view is that that was a pretty even match and I would let nature take its course. It's likely that the cat would have survived anyway but the point is that our human intervention at all levels in the environment (now including the dramatic change of the very atmosphere of the planet) is causing a huge imbalance in the worlds natural systems. Of course we are part of nature but our success and overabundance, if it continues unchecked, is likely to lead to our own extinction along with that of a large number of other species. This prospect troubles me more than any of the other (and there certainly are many) humanitarian disasters in the world. But enough of the heavy stuff.

Mr. Skid