Utne Reader just put out an excellent article on the grey area of human animal relationships, called Animals Like Us by Hal Herzog.
 
In this article Herzog explores the many contradictions in human animal relationships, even amongst the most black and white thinkers. What it mostly conveys is that there is no simple answer and judging others for their choice of relationship can quickly become fruitless and hypocritical.
 
I especially appreciated the detailed he provided in keeping cats as pets. I think about this as black and white thinking activists claim that keeping backyard animals as a food source will overburden our city services.
 
First, I’d like to point out that raising animals for food is and has been fully permissible in Oakland. What the city is working to do now is a policy update to put limits on this practice. This will actually mitigate cases that require city intervention. I would also expect, from results published in a 20 municipalities study, an overall decrease in complaints, as experienced by these cities once they created laws and limits with keeping backyard chickens.
 
I’d also like to point out that the current burden on city services, according to 2010 data from Oakland Animal Services, remains cats and dogs. The 2010 data reports only the first six months (January through end of May) but in that time, 1,626 dogs and 758 cats had received shelter services. Compare this to the 49 reported rabbits, 26 hens, 2 goats and 1 domestic duck. Also, reported is that 39% of those dogs and 29% of those cats were euthanized.  If it costs about ~$250 to hold, euthanize and dispose of an animal in most U.S. shelters, that’s $158,535 in six months on dogs alone. If we go ahead and double that as a possible total year expenditure, we get $317,070 on dogs and using the 6% euthanization rate listed for rabbits, $1,470 on rabbits.
 
As for the argument that Oakland is encouraging meat consumption by allowing people to raise their own healthy meat sources rather than buy factory farm meat, 1) it makes no sense to attack a community who is opposed to factory farming and 2) cats are strict carnivores. So, lets say we all worked together to find homes for those hundreds of abandoned cats, consider this:
 
“The pet-food shelves of [the] local supermarket are piled high with six-ounce tins of cow, sheep, chicken, horse, turkey, and fish. Even dried cat foods are advertised as containing ‘fresh meat.’ With about 94 million cats in America, the numbers add up. If each cat consumes just two ounces of meat daily, en masse they consume nearly 12 million pounds of flesh—the equivalent of 3 million chickens—every single day.”
 
Where is this meat sourced from? Factory farms.
 
It seems to me that with Oakland Animal Services so heavily burdened (and believe me, there is no doubt that they are feeling the budget cuts in Oakland) their efforts, and the efforts of their tireless volunteers, would be best focused on addressing proper dog and cat care than on prohibiting people to raise their own food. We would all do well to put energy toward changing factory farm practices.
 
For further reads, check out these articles on some of the issues faced by Oakland Animal Services, here and here.