Would you kill your pet if ordered to by the gov't?

[JackiePlace]

I read in the news this morning that at the beginning of the Covid crisis the gov't considered ordering the culling of all domestic cats in order to prevent the spread of Covid. This idea was later abandoned after it was proven that cats couldn't transmit Covid to humans.
AIBU to think that this would have caused a mass uprising? We are a nation of animal lovers, after all. Or would people have accepted it as they did some of the other draconian regulations (not visiting dying relatives, etc).

www.lbc.co.uk/news/govt-cat-cull-covid-pandemic/

We need a dog flu pandemic to get rid of all the bloody things

I think in an extreme case like this it must be an inevitable, though nearly impossible decision for some - I can't imagine having to make it, but I think of all those images from Ukraine with people lugging their German Shepherds over their shoulders.
So many pets must have been left behind, causing unimaginable heartbreak.

Most wouldn’t have complied, let’s be fair

Oh no🤣🤣 how could you say this

Totally agree @ShimmeringShirts we still wear masks.
If we start the mass killing of everything we think might cause something where does it end.

I mean, if I had to choose between my car or my 3yo and 11month old? Obviously k would choose my cat children.

It probably depends on whether people thought the risk was just to others or to their immediate family or dc

If you think something has potential to harm it might make you act. Depends on how they state the risk

Hard to know though. Looking back so much was crazy.

🤨

Over my dead body.

Pets are precious but human lives are worth more

My cat is worth more than Matt Hancock. Just saying.

I guess you could say the same thing about humans.

Ooh for the moment it's advised ro scatter seeds on the ground and not use bird feeders. Or on shed roof/ porch/ extention roof. The reason being that the feeders can harbour the virus whereas the grass cannot (or not as easily)
there is a shocking photograph of a Robin with boils around its beak, caught something from a bird feeder.

I used to have loads but they sit empty and I put seeds on the grass instead.

Well....I was in my lab working on a virus that kills only dogs, it's very intensive work so I took a 5-minute break to browse on Mumsnet ☝🏻👀

Oh yes! I've had neighbours like yours too, and there's no doubt that they would go after people that they know have pets.

How braindead do you have to be to risk prison for your cat 🤣🤣🤣

I would have thought quite a few neighbours of cats who poo in their gardens would have done it for the owners.

No, we would’ve kept her no matter what. Dh would’ve literally killed for our last cat, a Bengal.

If war broke out I’d have her pts because she has no survival skills.

Dh & I admired Ukrainian refugees taking their pets, it showed their grit that they didn’t just walk away from their pets.

people told on their neighbours, stopped seeing their families, disowned their own children because they had their own views, they didn’t say goodbye to loved ones when they died and wouldn’t even sit on a bench because they were worried they’d get told off. Of corse they’d kill their pets if the gov told them to.

There would have been threads where people would have been reporting their neighbours for hiding their cats inside and 80% of people on these boards would be telling them they had done the right thing. ‘If it only saves one life’
And as you can see from my user name I love cats so no, they would have to arrest me to get my cats.

Plymouth brethren members culled their pets when ordered to do so by their leaders

People would be catnapping other people's pets and euthanising them.

This ^

Thanks for the tip. Just checked mine, and am still quite happy with both. I still wouldn’t have culled my pets.

All these people who wouldn’t eat so they could feed their cat/wouldn’t kill their pets for the greater good are mostly talking bullshit. If the choice was between you and your cat living of course you’re going to kill it. It would have been done humanely FFS.

Oh i did not know that! Thanks for the info. Back to the ground then I think.

We did put it on the groudn but she originally got hysterical about it attracting rats. (Which it did not... not least because we have cats ).

tbh I doubt no matter what we do she is going to moan. She moaned because she did not like the colour of a rose bush I planted in my own garden and asked our gardeners to take it out. (I hit the roof when I found that out).