The e-mail is still pouring (but not purring) in. For example:

Wonderously-reasoned piece. Brilliant insight. What a mind! Ever hear of RATS, you moron?
Ever have to peel birds**t off your car, house, sidewalk,mailbox, shirt? Ever have to climb on a roof and dig birdnests out of your chimney? Ever have to pay a grand to have a dead squirrel dislodged from the bottom of a vent pipe – which has backed up your entire plumbing system and flooded your house? (Oh, wait. You didn’t even TOUCH on the havoc cats play on the SQUIRREL population, or address how many bird deaths may be attributed to squirrels every year.)
How about kids with slingshots and BB guns? Open season?
How about half-baked nitwits who feature themselves “columnists”?

ME: This sort of thing is taking the lead among emailers. What I like about the macho cat defender position is that there’s not a trace of environmentalism — or desire to address my actual arguments — anywhere to be found. It’s all a Hobbesian argument in favor of killing birds because they’re annoying (squirrels too). Why not simply poison the birds then? Why not design pesticides under the assumption that certain crop-eating bugs and birds are pests?