In Switzerland, hunting for stray cats remains law. The protests of animal welfare associations and politicians opposed to firing guns at the felines in the city were of no use: "the slaughter of wandering cats" remains legitimate.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himIn Switzerland la hunting stray cats remains law. The protests of animal welfare associations and politicians opposed to firing guns at the felines in the city were of no use: "the slaughter of wandering cats" remains legitimate.
Any Swiss citizen will be able to continue to hold a rifle and shoot a stray cat, a source of dirt and a carrier of disease. Unacceptable for the neat and very clean Swiss cantons. It will be enough to stay at least 180 meters from your home - the only limit specified by the law - and thus contribute, with gunshots, to what has been defined as a "feline invasion".
Leading the battle in defense of the Swiss cats Luc Barthassat, deputy of the canton of Geneva who supported the petition launched by the children of the Sos Chats refuge who in a few months had managed to collect and send to the Bundersrat - the Federal Council - as well 13.700 signatures. "Let's say enough to hunt wandering cats”The slogan with which, accompanied by the photo of the kitten Lara Croft wounded in the leg by a bullet, an attempt was made to sensitize Swiss citizens to put an end to this massacre.
But nothing, it was all in vain. The proposed mediation attempts are also useless: the individual cantons will decide on the suppressions because "the thinning of stray cats" is necessary as the indiscriminate proliferation of felines would endanger birds, hares and reptiles, but also because being stray "they end by mating with cats much wilder than them ", also threatening public health and the very survival of the domestic species.
But how do you recognize a "stray" cat from the neighbor's cat who has gone for a walk? Not even with this objection Barthassat managed to dissuade the Council, much less by pointing out the danger for citizens to open fire in urban centers.
Switzerland, therefore, does not follow the example of France where this barbarism has fortunately been abolished. In this sense, the Enpa at least hopes that the individual Cantons will assume legislative responsibility by working to ban "this practice as barbaric as it is useless". “From the data provided by the Central Swiss Association for the protection of animals - says the Enpa in a press release - it is obvious how active it is: 27.463 are the animals accepted in 2010 in the shelters of the seventy sections of the association. This means that Switzerland is not a country where millions of stray cats roam ready to go wild in the woods. We are confident that the individual Cantons will overcome what appears to be a regulatory residue, by now without any comparison with the sensitivity of our times, as recently happened in France ".
Because obviously thinking about a sterilization plan would “waste” too much public money and too much time. And on money and time in Switzerland, you know, there is no compromise.
Simona Falasca
