MM: The great A'mdabadi mouse-trap: April 13, 2008 | Cleanliness : News Articles

AHMEDABAD: When the cat is away, the mice will play. So the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), which has been flooded with calls of rodent menace in several areas, has decided to set cats among the mice.

The civic body thinks this Tom and Jerrying will bring the situation under control. Deputy Municipal Commissioner Z A Sacha says that four cats have been released near the Swaminarayan temple in Kalupur.

But couldn’t the AMC hire rat catchers like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation or the Surat Municipal Corporation did, and offer incentives to them?
“Our idea is cost-effective,” Sacha says. Dani Limda, Madhupura market and Gomtipur are the other places facing rodent menace. Cat troop deployment here will depend on how effective AMC’s feline army is in fighting the scurrying enemy in Kalupur.

Sacha said the AMC now has around 25 cats. An additional battalion of around 15 cats will be deployed in Kalupur area on April 15. If need be, citizens will be asked for their pet cats.

OPERATION POUNCE

Stealthy alley cats ‘deployed’ in trouble-torn areas will scour the areas. Sacha’s theory: When rats smell a cat, they congregate. The congregation holes will be ‘identified’ and rodents smoked out. This will kill rodents by the hundreds and they will be disposed off through incinerators.

But will that actually work or lead to a ‘cat’astrophe?

Not really, thinks a resident of Nagina Pol in Kalupur, Aziz Gandhi. “Rats come from sewers. Cats being cats, won’t enter manholes to catch mice,” Gandhi says.

Gandhi says last year, the AMC called in Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) officials to tackle the menace. SMC men trained AMC workers in laying 20 traps at ‘strategic’ locations in the pol. “The idea snapped in their face,” says Gandhi.

But the AMC has not given up. Traps too will be laid, but only after measuring the success of the cat-ching operation.

It’s official now

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