Have a Magical Day?
2010 Food & Wine Festival, Part 1: Argentina
At Disney, All That Glows Does Not Explode
George Roush Lets His Hair Down at Rapunzel Event
Doing Things at Disney in the Dark
Feral Cats at Disneyland: Anyone Seen Mickey Lately?
If you're a feline, this takes some head-wrapping. A colony of feral cats calls Disneyland home. Their mission? Rid the park nightly of vermin. The flagship Disney character is a mouse. Technically, vermin. So the cats work for their meal - literally.
According to Ben Popken, who wrote an article yesterday on the Consumerist about the feral cats, Disney not only tolerates their presence but considers them 'partners' and has been in said unholy partnership for nearly three decades.
The cats purr by day, pounce by night. It's astonishing that over 200 feral cats can live in Disneyland unseen and unheard by the thousands of people who tromp through daily. Those people, of course, litter, and the litter draws rats, mice, and other tasty little treats for the cats' midnight feast. Disney maintenance must hose away any traces or splatters.
To keep the colony under control, Disney captures and neuters its members, but clearly the gig is so tempting that new aspirants regularly slink into the park to compensate for the lack of kittens.
Cats are safer than traps and poison, certainly, and there's something vaguely 'wheel of life' at work here, but has anyone considered why Disney never animated a cat to join Mickey, Donald, and the other old-timers? Mickey has a pet dog not a pet cat. Putting a cat with Mickey would be like putting a cannibal in an orphanage. Nothing good would come of it.
For Mickey, then, Disneyland after dark must be a frightening place, full of purrs and harsh hairball hacks, where the park visitors for a change don't want his autograph...
Want more? Mike Callahan wrote at length about Disneyland's cats in an article entitled High Ferality, and of course the folks at Alley Cat Allies got into the act with a story complimentary of Disney's humane treatment of its rodent patrol.
Now if only Disney could find a way to rid the parks of my personal 'pet' peeve: the dumbos who stop short, like boulders in a stream, forcing everyone to navigate around them. Trapdoors?