Mayor Gale Katchur sparked controversy this week after suggesting that residents could use outdated and inhumane tactics to deal with the city’s feral cat population. During a City Committee meeting on Tuesday, Katchur, while discussing the issue, reflected on practices from “the old days” on farms, where feral cats were thrown “in a bag and thrown in the river or… put on the exhaust pipes.”
Katchur, who grew up on a farm, chuckled as she made the comments, adding, “I hope that doesn’t get captured anywhere.” The meeting, however, was publicly recorded and posted to the city’s YouTube channel.
The controversial remarks came during a discussion about a proposal to relocate feral cats to rural residences or farms. In her comments, Mayor Katchur even acknowledged the cruelty with which some people dealt with feral cats, though chuckling as she made the remark.
The city’s data on feral cats shows a slight decrease in complaints, with 66 cat-related reports in 2023 compared to 101 in 2022. Despite this, Katchur’s comments have cast a shadow over the ongoing debate on how to manage the issue humanely.
Transcript of the video above:
“When it comes to feral cats it would be cruel to say, but it would be interesting that if people could deal with them themselves, like I’m going to say in the old days when you lived on the farm now be careful because when you lived on the farm, if there was [sic] cats you threw them in a bag and threw them in the river or they just put them on the exhaust pipe, so that’s how they…
“It’s okay. I grew up on a farm. I knew what happened back then and there wasn’t a lot of emotion tied to it. We, people just dealt with cats that showed up unwanted. So for all the city people, that’s the reality of living on a farm, just FYI. I hope that doesn’t get captured anywhere as being the mean mayor. So anyway I would be okay with status quo. But I think there are options if they are caught and can’t be dealt with.”
The City of Fort Saskatchewan is expected to issue an official statement later today in response to the controversy.
More to come.
