Animal Lovers Turn On Each Other Down The Shore

It’s never safe for me when I write about animals. If I just call one dog breed ugly or wish for the death of one horse, people really get angry.

This time, though, two different animals groups are fighting with each other, and so the animal people will fight with each other. I should be safe. Cape May is the bird watching capital of the east coast, the World Series of Birding is held in Cape May and bird watching brings in $2 billion to the state economy. (Birders, I word I might just have made up, have deep pockets.)

“This is a very emotional issue; this really is a cat town,” said resident Pat Peckham.

Emotional! The issue is: A bunch of cats are eating birds. Endangered birds. Birds that are required to be protected by law. But the cats have more people on their side, since lots of people have cats and owning a bird is weird:

“We’re intent on protecting all species,” said Jessica Frohman with Alley Cat Allies in Bethesda, Md. “But birds are not somehow more important than cats.”

So will they kill a bunch of cats? Will the birds all be eaten? Will the cats be moved? (Will feathers fly? Sorry.) The blog comment sections of bird and cat blogs will be battlegrounds.

It’s cats vs. rare bird in N.J. town [AP/Yahoo! News]