The "captive exotic cats are dangerous" argument...

There's no denying that some of the large species of "wild" cats can easily injure or kill a person--even people who have them and love them dearly will tell you they have to be vigilant when working with them. But are ALL captive wild cats necessarily "dangerous"? To whom are they dangerous? And are any of them really a public safety issue? The question of the safety of keeping captive exotic cats has several facets.

To claim that exotic cats are all "dangerous" is either an incredibly ignorant oversimplification, or an incredibly dishonest statement--depending on the motivation one chooses to assume for the person making such a statement.

The individual animal's degree of tameness--
It's well-known that a serval (for example) will behave much differently towards people if it's introduced to them as a kitten and raised from a very young age with them, than if it grows up in the wild, or in captivity but caged and given little or no interaction with humans. For domestic dogs and cats, we call it socialization. And everyone accepts that a kitten or puppy needs to be properly socialized when they're young if they're going to be good around people when they're adults. The same thing happens with all species of exotic cats. The degree to which each animal will grow up tame varies with the species as well as the individual animal, but the same type of thing happens with all of them to one extent or another. So we have the first variable in how dangerous an exotic cat can be: its degree of tameness.

A tame exotic cat (one that has grown up with much human interaction and affection) is generally going to be much less dangerous than one (of the same species) that has either grown up in the wild or in a captive environment devoid of positive human interactions. But tameness and a cat's familiarity with people alone doesn't necessarily determine whether or not that cat will be "safe" for direct contact with people.

Size of the cat--
Size is an important factor in how dangerous an exotic cat can be. Would you rather have a 500-pound tiger, or a 7-pound Asian Leopard Cat pounce on you or swat you with its paw? The larger and stronger an exotic cat is, the more careful (and knowledgeable) one needs to be to safely work or interact with it. A large-enough cat can kill a person even while playing around. And all cats (domestics included) play using predatory behavior: pouncing, rushing, and stalking. This natural instinctive nature of their play, coupled with massive size and strength of some of the large species can make for potentially dangerous combinations when you're talking about the big cats.

A large cat that interacts with others of its size to exercise its dominance, may also conceivably choose to contest the human's authority over it.

Size also tends to locate where a cat thinks it is on the food chain. Some of the large cats have few (if any) natural predators (once they're adults), and they may not be inclined to run and hide (or back down from a possible confrontation) unless threatened by an animal larger than themselves, or a pack of attackers. So there are several ways that the size of a cat can affect how dangerous it potentially could be to the people having direct contact with it.

Size of the cat's natural prey--
To some extent, the cat's size also affects the size of prey they hunt, although not entirely. An adult serval, for example, weighs 20-40 pounds, but eats (almost entirely) rats and other small animals weighing just ounces. But lions will go after animals much larger than themselves. The size of prey that a cat naturally hunts affects how dangerous it can be to humans having direct contact with it, because, a cat that instinctively hunts small animals will never look upon a human as possible prey.

Conclusions about a cat's size--
The above "size" discussion leads to the conclusion that a small cat is inherently less dangerous than a big one. (Duh!) But people who support laws that ban private ownership of exotic cats always paint ALL the species with the same brush--just as if a Geoffroy's Cat (roughly the size of a runt of a domestic cat) is as "dangerous" as lion or tiger. Is it because of ignorance? Is it because of stupidity or simple-mindedness? Or is it because their desire to keep exotic cats out of our homes is part of a larger agenda?

This isn't to say that some of the small cats can't kill a human if they really want to--some of them can. But it is to say that it's significantly harder for a small cat to kill a human than it is for the big cats. And it's certainly easier for a person to defend themselves from a small cat than it is from an attack by a big cat.

Most of the small cats typically hunt prey much smaller than humans, and so will not tend to look at us as being food. Most of them also have larger predators, and so are generally more likely to run and hide if possible, rather than to stand-up to a human (unless--of course--they're cornered). And even though some of them are capable of killing an adult human, it's not an easy task for them, and they'd have to be serious about it to be able to do it.

"Dangerous" needs some definition--
There is actually quite a wide range of "dangerousness" (if you will) that can be attributed to an exotic cat--depending on...

the individual animal that's involved (it's species and socialization with people)
the particular person involved, and
the particular situation the particular animal and the particular person find themselves in

The particular person who's involved is significant, because exotic cats often bond very strongly to a single person out of the family who raised them. Other family members could be accepted to a lesser degree or not at all, and often strangers are not accepted at all. So who the individual person is who's attempting to interact with the animal has a huge impact on whether the cat should be considered "safe," or not.

The particular situation the animal and person are in also has a huge bearing on whether the encounter will be a "safe" one, or not. In the environment that the cat is used to, with people it is used to, it may be an extraordinarily safe animal for them to interact with. But when a cat gets loose, and is being cornered by animal control so it can be captured, exotic cats can be as ferocious as their size allows. (Of course, given similar circumstances, so would some domestic cats...) Even this is not a "public safety" issue, however. An animal control officer being attacked by an animal they're trying to corner and capture is not a matter of "public safety"--it's an occupational hazard. The equipment required to capture most of the small exotic cats is not much different (once you get close to them) from that needed to capture something like an adult raccoon, or a German shepard.

When small exotic cats get loose, they generally try to hide somewhere. They do not hunt children. They're most likely to try to avoid contact with any strangers if they can. So the escape of a small exotic cat is not a public safety "issue" at all.

To claim that exotic cats are all "dangerous" is either an incredibly ignorant oversimplification, or an incredibly dishonest statement--depending on the motivation one chooses to assume for the person making such a statement. But that is exactly the position that ban proponents always argue.

Ban proponents don't just argue that exotic cats are dangerous per se, or even just dangerous to their owners--they argue that exotic cats pose a threat to public safety. In fact they generally go out of their way to muddy the issue by interchangeably talking about "public safety" and the safety of the individual owner of the cat. "Public safety" is a completely different issue than the safety of an individual while doing an activity of his (or her) choice. I will use the term "individual safety" for the latter.

To say that something is a "public safety" issue means that a significant number of people (in the general public) are exposed to something bad--often without even realizing it until it is too late to avoid the peril. Or, in some cases, the peril is not observable to the average person, so even if one is aware of the danger, there may be little or no way to protect oneself from it. Some examples of "public safety" issues could be

food or drug contamination
products that are unsafe because of improper design, manufacturing processes, or materials
improper procedures or mistakes in hospitals
bridges that are structurally unsound due to overdue or improperly-done maintenance
buildings that are unsafe due to improper construction, design, or maintenance

An "individual safety" issue is where the individual voluntarily chooses to do something that he (or she) knows can have dangerous consequences, but they willingly choose to do it anyway. The individual is aware of the risks involved, and deliberately decides that the benefits outweigh the risks. Some examples of "individual safety" issues are

playing football (at any level: high school, college, or professional)
skiing
riding a motorcycle
riding a bicycle
sky diving
skate boarding
mountain, rock, or ice climbing
hunting
scuba diving

It is generally accepted that our government should try to protect the public safety of its citizens. But the individual safety of its citizens while they do things of risk to themselves (and sometimes to others, as well) is typically either left completely alone or regulated in some manner--not outlawed. Several of the "individual safety" activities listed above do entail the participant (who willingly chooses to accept the risks) potentially exposing random members of the public to accidents as well as themselves, but the activities are still not outlawed. Every one of the activites listed above have much higher injury and death rates than exotic cat ownership and the government hasn't made their participants criminals.

Dishonest use of data and misrepresentation of facts--
According to exotic cat incident data that's been compiled by API (a group that aggressively promotes bans for all kinds of exotic animals--not just cats), almost everyone in the US who was injured or killed by captive exotic cats from 1990 to 2006 fell into one of the following categories--

the cat's caregiver or owner
friends or family members of the cat's owner, or
visitors to the facility where the cat was housed

The common thread here: the people who were injured or killed either went out of their way to be close to the cat (or, in the case of infants, the childrens' family members either owned the cat or took the child to see the cat). If you don't go to a place where a big cat is housed, you have almost zero probability of being attacked and injured by a captive exotic cat. Quite a few of the incidents occurred when the victim reached inside the cat's cage, so even if you do go somewhere that has captive exotic cats, you can keep your odds of injury very low just by being halfway intelligent and following common-sense safety rules.

And by the way--deaths in the above data were only due to big cats. There were several small cat bites recorded in the data, but no small cats were involved in any deaths, and only two so-called "maulings" were attributed to small cats (both of which involved 2-year old children--what were the parents of those kids doing at the time?? --But the ban proponents won't discuss that.) And we don't know what the actual extent of the injuries were--a "mauling" to someone trying justify banning the cats might be as few as two or three bites.

Pro-ban groups go out of their way to cite exotic cat "incident" statistics to claim a big danger to the general public from exotic cat possession. But the data behind the numbers they cite as "proof" doesn't even to begin to support their claims. Their numbers are not just padded--they're bloated with extraneous events that did not involve any public danger. Many of them were not even verified as actually involving a captive exotic cat, or in some other way were completely irrelevant to an honest discussion of captive exotic cat safety.

Following is a list of the kinds of "incidents" they listed that either have no place in the statistics at all, or should be listed and dealt-with separately--

small-cat escapes and recoveries where no human injuries resulted (the majority of these were small cats like servals, bobcats, and jungle cats that typically pose no danger to people when they're loose--unless they're cornered by strangers)
a cat escape due to the house it was living in catching fire
cats that were clearly set loose by someone (holes were cut in their cages)
unconfirmed "sightings" of animals "thought" to be escaped pets--often with such vagueness that it's obvious the person had no idea what they were even seeing "what appears to be," "that's thought to be" etc.--let alone whether it was an escaped or released pet, or not
young cubs of big cats that are found loose and wandering or abandoned at someone's doorstep
cats being found dead on the road, and being assumed to be escaped pets, with little or no evidence that they actually were pets in the first place
cats being recovered that their owners had reported stolen
cats that got loose while being driven to the vet and the vehicle they're in having an accident

Inclusion of data like this is not accidental misinterpretation--it's deliberate dishonesty. It's an attempt to make people think there is a "problem" when the fact is that any danger posed to the general public by captive exotic cats--even if you're talking about large cats--is almost nothing compared to other risks we take every day without even batting an eye. And ban proponents misrepresent the facts like this all the time.

The test to determine whether any particular example actually 'counts' as evidence to support a claim that captive exotic cats constitute a public safety issue is very simple. The next time you read anyone's tirade about how dangerous captive exotic cats are, look at the examples they cite, and ask the following questions about each example:

Was there a serious human injury or death involved? and
Was the cat proven to be a pet or a specific species of captive exotic cat, or was it just speculated to be?

If the answer to either of the two questions above is "no," then the writer (or speaker) has not proven their argument with that example.

Conclusion: the small exotic and hybrid cats we're proposing to legalize in Nebraska are NOT a danger to the public--
If the numbers are honestly considered, all exotic cats as a group are NOT a pubic safety issue if they're properly housed and cared-for, and (more specifically) the small exotic cats (like we want to have re-legalized here in Nebraska) are even less of an issue than the big cats (which we are not proposing be relegalized).

--Greg Lyons
2008-02-14