The Feral Cat Dilemma

I have consciously gone out of my way to shoot feral cats for many years now, ever since I started noticing a significant decline in numbers of what we call the Little Blue Lignum Wren, while hunting pigs in the lignum lined Wallandra billabong. I asked my aunt, who lived nearby, if she had noticed it as well and she just muttered ‘blasted feral cats’.

IT was just the following day that I came across a feral cat slinking along between the clumps of lignum, a mottled grey specimen with a stumpy tail. I had no qualms about shooting it even though I was carrying a Winchester .30/30. As usual, at this time of the year I was up at my aunt’s, on one of my many forays after pigs and foxes and during the night I was helping Dave shoot rabbits for the chillers. For many parts of outback New South Wales rabbits were in plague proportions due to good spring rains.

It didn’t