We had our first morning coffee on Towers balcony. What a treat. Christmas week with locals returning home and tourists decending in hundreds slowed our arrival yesterday. jetBlue from PR circled the island for 40 minuted before being cleared to land. Anyway, well worth waiting..
Happy holidays and Peace to all! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Groovin.gif" alt="" />

I think your arrival may have been slowed due to a "Go-Slow" by the immigration workers.

Welcome home, Yana, and wasn't the lobby tree a pretty one this year? <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" />

Pat, Christmas tree in the lobby looks great, weather is nice, food is great, but I am missing our resident cats. Not that I am a cat lover, this is my daughters domain, but they were part of Towers life since I remember.

We missed them, also. We were told there was a pack of dogs who killed one or two of them and caused most of the others to take off, too. We only saw two or three kittens and one adult cat and that was over our full two weeks. I wonder if they're missing Terry......

Four weeks from today I'll be having my morning coffee and watching the sun rise on Sxm. Cannot wait!

The cat population on this Island is out of hand. They are a real menace to the wildlife, many indigenous species are almost extinct due to cats.

I am glad that dogs try to keep the cat population down.

I guess we're all entitled to our own opinions. Personally speaking, if I understould yours correctly, I think it stinks!!

The cats at the Towers, while still wild by nature, were all well cared for and neutered and given the appropriate shots in a timely manner.

The wild dogs, particularly those running in packs are a menace to everyone. We saw a young boy get bitten by one on Simpson Bay beach last week, not to mention the mess of their leavings. And for the record, I am an all-animal lover - dogs, cats and almost any others you might want to toss into the topic.

Dear Pat,

I respect your opinion and would never say that it "Stinks".

I also love animals, but facts are stubborn, wild cats are a real threat to wildlife.

According to a UN study of the effects of predation by introduced animals in the Caribbean, cats are responsible of the extinction of 71 species.

I would add also that here they are especially responsible for killing baby ring tailed Iguana, a protected species that is threatened by extinction.

So you see, if you get rid of all of those wild dogs, cats will thrive and iguanas will become part of history ...

Maybe Cupecoy is different but I commented several times while visiting Simpson Bay, Grand Case, Orient and Dawn beaches last week that there didn't seem to be as many stray dogs as I've seen in years past. Are they still a problem?

Not really, their population has decreased and they are not dangerous.

My son has walked across the golf course late at night many times and they never showed and signs of aggressiveness. If you know anything about dogs you can immediately see that they are friendly.

For cats, it's a different story, too many people feed them and their population is growing rapidly. Apart from dogs, they have no predators.

A large Iguana would not be a predator to a cat? I saw one a few years ago that could have taken out a large sized dog.

Iguanas are indigenous to this Island. Ring tailed Iguanas are rare and in threat of becoming extinct.

Iguanas are vegetarian and are a trace of ancient life on earth and, as such, are protected.

pat
The cats maybe neutered of spade but you still have to live with the life time of those animals.

dlbert

I guess you can ignore Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species – in his Principles of Biology (1864)

Dictionary definition Survival of the fittest,
a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.
Maybe you concepts should be extinct also, it is alright for dogs to kill cats, but if a cat kills something it is evil.

Mercy, not sure why this thread has gone here, but it is done.