Let’s hear it for the python that had the civic good sense to eat Wilbur the cat

Felix

Absolutely spot on, Rod. Cats are murderous, filthy animals, yet they are allowed to roam free in a manner not granted to other household pets. Out of their strict confines they should be fair game for anyone.

Sandra Bates

This article is just plain dumb. In the US the Burmese Pythons have escaped into the wild and their numbers are out of all control. There is a real danger that a child or adult could be attacked and killed. Has Mr Liddle thought about one of his own children being attacked by a 13-ft Burmese Python?

Paul Worthington

Rod Liddle airs opinions for a living. I hope he knows more about the other subjects of his public opining than he does about the behaviour of cats. Prefer a mouse and rat infested neighbourhood? A garden fence would be no obstacle to a python, and a python big enough to swallow a cat would also be a danger to humans. Domestic cats have been native to Britain longer than the Anglo Saxons. Pythons have not.

Sir Graphus

If "the bloody Wadeys are now petitioning 10 Downing Street", I hope they're using the same on-line petitioning service as the rest of us; the one which was designed to make it seem like there was a means for govt to listen to to public opinion but in fact is specifically there for the venting of public anger and rigorously ignored by govt. I mean, they never gave Humphrey Littleton his knighthood, and that's just for starters.

Barry

Felix: "Cats are murderous, filthy animals, yet they are allowed to roam free in a manner not granted to other household pets. Out of their strict confines they should be fair game for anyone."

So are kids where I live. Go figure....

Nick Berry

Couldn't agree with you more! At least snake owners recognise that they own a potentially dangerous animal. The trouble with dogs and cats is that because they're fluffy people don't consider them potentially dangerous.

Matthew Wilson

There are already plenty of cat owners in today's society who keep their pets indoors on safety grounds. At the same time, many of the cats that do venture outside have been trained as kittens to cover over their faeces.

Those cat owners whose cats like to crap in other people's gardens are in turn likely to have their gardens crapped in by other people's cats. So it goes.

When I was a toddler, our back garden consisted of a concrete yard, the only feature of which was a sandpit. Unsurprisingly, this amenity proved popular with the neighbourhood cats (I'm not sure about our own two). Undaunted, my cat-loving father constructed a wooden lattice to place over the sandpit when it was not in use. Sadly, as is the way of these things, the more ingenious and determined visitors soon learned how to shuffle out into the middle of this framework before crapping through one of the holes.

By imputing a set of malignant motives to these creatures, Rod Liddle simply diminishes himself. Most Spectator readers will have a sense of humour about tales of cat pits, but I'm not sure the same can be said of the RSPCA and its various supporters.

Neil Robertson

Okay, Paul Worthington so pythons are a rather extreme example. But I have hens and have to chase the local cats away in the evening from going after them. Why am I not within my rights to get rid the cat or have the owners deal properly with the cat?

MikeF

Not a good article Rod. Mean-spirited and insensitive. Not at all funny. The owners of this poor beast are to be commended on their restraint. In their place I would simply take an axe to the python. Pythons, by the way, don't do this sort of thing, while cats - it seems - do:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/8195156.stm

Matt Bregazzi

Sandra -

Rod's point is not that we all want Burmese pythons slithering wild and free all over England. The issue he's getting at is the fact that cat owners don't give a stuff about what their animal gets up to, but when the boot is on the other foot they winge like nobody else. There are far too many domestic animals in the UK as it is - there needs to be some sort of licensing for them.

Cats are one of the few animals which chase and catch others purely for their own amusement, and are incredibly disloyal (at least when compared to dogs). I'm no dog lover either, but at least they don't abandon their owners when the family down the street starts feeding them salmon.

Alison

Well done Rod, you seem to have brought out the worst in everyone.

Mike C

It is illegal to try to avoid a cat in the road - they are NOT classed as domestic animals.
For the same reason, cats in my garden get shot, as do rabbits, pheasants etc. Nasty little b@stards they are, if they looked like toads, more people would realise what evil creatures they really are?

Mike

About ten years ago when I was still living in Britain we suffered from our nighbours cats climbing on the roof of our conservatory and howling at night by the bedroom window. After several weeks of this racket I armed myself with a super soaker water toy and waited until the ugly s*** started up. Getting him full in the face he was last seen heading down the street at a rapid rate of knots and it took a week before he returned home. Needless to say, we had peace and quiet after this.

Paul P

Up to your usual impeccable standards, Rod. By the way, where is the queue to borrow the snake?
Err....I'll get my coat.

eddy

what an ill informed tosser you are!,the thrush's decline is down to food and habitat,main diet being slugs and snails MUDERED in the millions by over zealous gardeners,the sparrow...disease..the starling...vermin,a true carrier of filth if ever there was one,as for the snake..it dose'nt belong in this country,these pythons and one of that size is more than capable of killing a child,in fact capable of killing but not eating an adult,get a life moby,if all you can do is get attention from others through your misinformed opinions you need to get out more mate!

Jim Scott

Highly amusing article.....and yes I do own a cat which to date hasn't extinguished my sense of humour. What really irritates me is that the Wadeys are now petitioning Parliament over such trivia when there are so many more important issues they could have focused on. Even worse, given this Governments total lack of anything resembling common sense, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were successful.

David Barnett

What a vile article.

The cat's owners heard their pet scraming in pain and fear as it was crushed to death. This is something that will affect them for a long time to come. What a despicable and callous response!

Liddle may not realise this, but cats make delightful pets which quickly become beloved members of the family.

Bring back Paul Johnson and send this fellow packing. He lowers the tone.

Richard

Brilliant and funny article - I've sent it on to many friends! Thank you.

As for the Wadeys, well you have to feel their pain if only between bouts of laughter...

Paul Hammans

Yes, those who live by the tooth must expect to die by the claw. I'm a cat owner and reckon our last one was carried off by an errant Buzzard. Solution - get a new cat, it's pointless whingeing.

frobisher

Hurrah! a bit of common sense about cats. Yes they are a selfish, murderous, flea ridden bunch and the population could do with a bit of control.
And surprisingly I own one too.

Michael Petek

This is the most vacuous article I've read in a long time. Apart from all the other points which have been made on this blog, Wilbur was someone's property when eaten by someone else's.

The point about changing the law to control these reptiles is that snakes are controlled as dangerous animals only if they are venomous, but not if they are constrictors, be they ever so lethal to humans. Less than 2 months ago an 8-foot Burmese python killed a 2-year old girl in Florida.

I know that, if I were a father and found out that someone in the neighbourhood was keeping one of these snakes, they would get an ultimatum commensurate with my responsibility to protect my child.

amar irani

aah, brave Liddle, feel free to blaspheme Hindu deities! we don't care.

Maximilian

My nephew once had a pet tarantula, a present from another uncle, a doctor who was then working at an establishment dealing with poisonous animals. The tarantula had had her poison glands, if that's the right word, removed. The difficulty, though, was keeping her fed. The recommended diet was insects, preferably served still alive. I shall always be grateful to her for the very great favour she did me, in enabling me to overcome my lifelong arachnophobia. She achieved that miracle in less than two minutes, simply by escaping from her box at a moment when there was no one else in the flat but her owner, then nine years old, and me.

protea

Dead right, Ron. Cats are deadly on our Australian native birds, and its nice to see a python redress the balance.

Dwight Vandryver

This kind of nonsense is generated by the middle classes who have too much wealth and too much time on their hands. If their pet moggie runs into the road and is squashed by a passing car, it is the motorist's fault. If they take their disobedient pooch into a field with cows and calves and the owner gets trampled to death, it is the cows' fault, or even the farmer's fault for not training the herd properly.
While it is true that the domestic pet is a substitute for human interaction, so-called animal lovers have completely lost a sense of proportion. All of this lunacy could be stopped at a stroke by deliberately introducing the Australian funnel-web spider into the British ecosystem. Then let's see what the whingers would make of a little danger when weeding the herbaceous border.

Noa Zrk

Rod Lidl is truly a prophet for our time. Surely the point is not the eating of the cat, Wilbur, by the unnamed python, but the historic and inalienable right to the protection of our land and property from trespassers, any trespassers. Wilbur could have been, for example, an obnoxious child traveller, looking for a new house to burgle or to place its appalling family in at council expense. In such circumstances, trespasser edibility must be upheld as a legitimate defence for human rights. If you take away the right to python protection in its own home then the basic human right to keep a rotweiler will be next and we will be on the road to communal, indeed communist living. Dead dogs don't bite, neither do dead cats, but at least pythons can and do give a nasty suck.

Ewen

Outrageouzzzzzzz. Rod, you're a frequently brilliant writer but the whole Clarkson-lite schtick is very tired. Winding up people who like cats is fish-in-a-barrel stuff. I'll put it down to cautiousness after the kicking you got for "Harriet, would you?" etc etc. It's done, just be glad Charlie Brooker wasn't on air, and get back to your usual excellent standard.

Maximilian

Have the Wadeys thought of getting a mongoose?

A. MacAulay

What's the fuss? In Yorkshire the working class have been letting cats and pythons fight it out in their trousers for years. A rite of passage for stalwart young Yorkies, with not a little healthy, rustic ribaldry and bets on the side.

Snowman

Eddy:
August 14, 2.07 AM

Listen, surely you’ve left global warming as the major cause for the disappearing fauna. Important that. And, of course, G. W. Bush, but that goes without saying. Right?

I hold nothing against the roaming cats in our garden, except an air rifle. An ordinary one does the job well. Well done, Rod.

I. Guthire

This article disgusts me, as does the writer. How can anyone be so insensiteve? This was someone's pet cat and the owners were grieving, and still are. The python should not have been outside. What if a child had managed to get into the garden? The owner of the python should be prosecuted for having it outside.

Alison Saville

Fantastic article - top notch! This is the stuff to keep up our morale in these wretched times. Thank you, Rod!

Vicky

Rod Liddle is an ignorant man. He may be correct about cats eating wildlife, but not about anything else.

Pythons are reptiles, not pets, that all too frequently turn on their owners or become too big to handle and too difficult to feed. Many fully grown pythons either escape or are 'let into the wild' where they become a danger to everyone. I met a fully grown one one evening slithering accross the road while driving a moped. Had I not seen it in the dark and driven into it I too could easily have been strangled and swallowed. It takes just seconds for a python to immobilise its victim and squeeze the air out of its lungs by a chilling method - every time it senses its victims increasingly desperate pulse as its lungs are depleted of oxygen, it squeezes its coils tighter until its victim is dead.

Perhaps some unlucky python keeper, tired of having its hand attacked every time it feeds its 'pet' live mice or chicken could oblige us all by sending it on to Rod.

Vicky

Rod Liddle is an ignorant man. He may be correct about cats eating wildlife, but not about anything else.

Pythons are reptiles, not pets, that all too frequently turn on their owners or become too big to handle and too difficult to feed. Many fully grown pythons either escape or are 'let into the wild' where they become a danger to everyone. I met a fully grown one one evening slithering accross the road while driving a moped. Had I not seen it in the dark and driven into it I too could easily have been strangled and swallowed. It takes just seconds for a python to immobilise its victim and squeeze the air out of its lungs by a chilling method - every time it senses its victims increasingly desperate pulse as its lungs are depleted of oxygen, it squeezes its coils tighter until its victim is dead.

Perhaps some unlucky python keeper, tired of having its hand attacked every time it feeds its 'pet' live mice or chicken could oblige us all by sending it on to Rod.

Gareth Dean

I could predict the lunatic cries of some after this. I have to say it was one of the funniest things I have read in ages and did raise some notable points.

I do have to take issue with the oddness of the statement "what if a child had got into the garden"? This was the snake owner's own back garden, which was presumably a secure environment (if the snake could escape then they are truly reckless). So if a child got in then it would be at their own risk, much as it would be if they jumped into a swimming pool in a back garden, or happened to find their way into a yard with a guard dog. We don't even have to go that far, there are a number of commonly grown plants which will kill a child, perhaps we should lobby parliament on these too?

One final question to I. Gurthrie: Exactly how beneficial do you think a toddler playing in the safety of their own sand pit would find ingesting a cat's faecal material?

I am not a cat hater, but merely trying to point out the folly of trying to regulate against accidents!

Not Even Likely

A number of exotic, deadly snakes escaped into the Florida swamps when major hurricanes hit, and they have evolved into huge problems, killing native animals and pets alike. Cats exist the world over and do not threaten native species particularly. Snakes do, and should not be kept as pets. AT ALL.

Dave W

I'm utterly appalled and saddened that people find this story in the slightest bit humorous. It's beyond me how anyone can find it amusing to read about a much loved family pet suffering a terrifying and painful death - whether it be a cat, hamster, budgie or snake. I've got a friend who saw her young cat torn apart in her own front garden by a pit-bull terrior and it has taken her years to get over it. Ok, it's unpleasant and annoying that cats might poop in your garden, but it hardly warrants wanting to kill them. My car gets covered in 'target practice' from birds almost every day but it would never cross my mind to do them harm. And yes, it's not pleasant either that cats hunt and kill other animals - but there are a lot of things owners can do to help stop that. What shocks me about this whole story isn't that it happened - unfortunate as it is the snake was acting naturally - but that people are so quick to wish harm on a living being that meant something to someone. What a selfish and nasty society we seem to have turned into.

Applegarth

Never mind about Wilbur's amendment - government funding should be allocated immediately to establish the optimum mix of urine and Tabasco's sauce to achieve maximum kill rate.

PS I'm of course only indifferent towards cats

lady2007boomer

Cat Haters unite!
I have four of the unwanted critters that show in my patch. I keep an arsenal of gravel handy, and let them have it. In the UK you don't have their feral relations - raccoons. These unwanted guests show up in the early hours, with their trademark foul odour.
Bring on the pythons!

Celeste

The Everglades have launched a full-blown cull of Burmese Pythons.
What a wicked waste of a valuable resource.
Reporting that the pythons breed like flies, and have finished off the local songbirds and other indigenous species, the pythons have also scoffed full grown deer and four-foot alligators.
With the economy in deep trouble, here's a business opportunity for the alert
entrepreneur.
Those who administer the Everglades will be relieved to have someone take the pythons off their pristine wetlands.
Pythons have proved time and again to be healthy, hefty and frequent travellers.
By offering the services of these voracious carnivores to home owners exasperated with pesky cats, the canny entrepreneur would provide a valuable community service, and earn a tidy living.
Of course a cat would provide only a tasty morsel for the python, so the snake would need many cats to satisfy its appetite.
And when the python gets to be a little long in the fang - well, I'm told python steaks are an expensive delicacy.
Sounds like an ecologically sound, recyclable business model to me.

Gareth Dean

Dear "Not Even Likely"

I'm afraid you are utterly wrong. Cats have been directly responsible for the extinction fo several species and are an utter curse on close habitats like islands. In the UK we might not be in that situation, but endagered animals like the shrew or vole are not being helped by cats. The numbers we have on our crowded island are unbelievable and well beyond what would be a natural, sustainable, wild population. Domestic cats aren't native and don't belong in the eco-system, yet many cat owners simply reply "its natural" or "instinct" when their beloved tiddles brings home another native species.

Not Even Likely

Gareth, I reiterate that the domestic house cat is found the world over and has been there for centuries. They don't threaten native species "particularly" - any more than any other worldwide species such as dogs or vultures. Yes, they hunt and eat prey, threatening individuals of particular species. But Burmese pythons are of a different order. They are not indigenous to the continent. They take over the place like an alien, invasive species, which is what they are.

All cats are descended from the saber-tooth cat, and definitely exist and belong on the north and south American continents, as well as Africa, Asia, Europe, and most others probably only excluding Antarctica and Australia. Burmese pythons, on the other hand, are native to Burma, eat pets, children, and native species. They should not be imported. AT ALL. Sorry you don't like cats. But unless you'd like American rattlesnakes imported to Ireland, then maybe you should consider the point of my letter - that snakes and other non-indigenous species should not be imported and kept as pets in places where they should not exist.

Louisa

Oh dear, what very serious readers the Spectator has. Literal too. One of your best, Rod, very funny.

Gareth Dean

Pythons are causing a serious issue in Florida and possibly 1 or 2 other areas. Cats are causing a problem the world over, in fact one lighthouse keeper's cat wiped out a whole bird species on its own!

Pythons do not cause any loss of native wildlife in the UK and there are many good reasons for this.

Number one they are kept in very small numbers.

Number two they can't survive the climate.

Human introduction of rats, cats, goats, camels, donkeys and squirrels have all caused massive problems to habitats the world over. By contrast I think the pythons impact is rather more localised.

Facts are the cat was not in its owners garden and the python was. Neither the cat or the python would have naturalyl been there and one ate the other. Any suggestion that this should lead to the banning of snakes being kept is utterly farcical. If the owner had let it out in the local park and it had bitten or eaten a person then it is a different story.

geordiebri

Finally someone who speaks sense on the subject of the feline menace!

Rod for PM - I'd vote for you!

Noortje van Wijchgel

Thank you, thank you, Rod. I totally agree. Great article (as most of yours.

Top Cat Keen

Ha ha ha. The article is brilliant but even funnier are the crazy comments from this mad British cat loving cult. Next they will be telling us it is unpatriotic to dislike cats. Time for the sane people to rise up and assert our rights to cat free gardens and the right to shoot on sight any trespassing fur balls of evil.

M Wardle

Sublime!

Corin

'I do have to take issue with the oddness of the statement "what if a child had got into the garden"? This was the snake owner's own back garden, which was presumably a secure environment (if the snake could escape then they are truly reckless).'

If the cat could get in then the snake could get out.

Not Even Likely

Gareth, you still avoid my point. Cats have been on most continents for thousands of years, even if you don't like them. They are well past being considered alien, invasive species. Cats have lived in the UK isles for as long as humans.

You say that it should be ok to import dangerous snakes because they are small in number, and therefore the potential for harm is smaller. Of course, if there are fewer individual deadly snakes, they will harm fewer individual people and animals. Just don't let them get away from you. Because they have not been there for thousands of years. Once they get away, it's out of human control. To them, it's virgin land, ripe for habitat, for begetting eggs, for hunting. (Those Burmese pythons took to the Florida everglades like they were coming home to the promised land.) Let me just tell you, though, exotic animals, when free, won't differentiate much between red squirrels or grey, endangered bird eggs or common ones. It's all the same to them.

Dill the Dog

I'm going to renew my Speccy subscription based on this one article alone. Can't wait for more fun bigotry from Mr Liddle.

emilianoksa

You may not like cats, but gloating over their suffering is something else. I normally like your stuff but not this. As for the cat hating crowd who, very predictably, wrote in to praise you, they 're a pretty sick bunch. Cats behave as nature intended them to, nothing more. I happen to dislike dogs but I'm not so pathetic as to hate them. You've got to be pretty pathetic to do that. Not one of your better efforts, Mr Liddle.

William Wade

Cats "may well account at least partly for the rapid decline of some of our garden songbirds". But it is false that they account in any significant way for the decline of water voles. Mr Liddle may be confusing water voles with other voles, such as field voles. Released mink, however, are a major cause of the reduction in numbers of water voles; loss of habitat is another important factor.

Peter C.

I used to dislike cats intensely, until about fifteen years ago when a stray charmed herself into creating a permanent dimple on our sofa and a small add on to the food budget. She has since died and was immediately replaced, from an RSPCA home, with another.

But we can't see eye to eye with everyone about everything. I share your loathing of human beings like Harriet Harman - but I love cats and dogs and own one of each.

Incidentally the droppings of household mice were once frequently and annoyingly in evidence for us - no more.

Chris

Love it. Great article Rod.