For this Forum, Penelope Marshall led us through a work in progress on the current troubled importation of the Savannah Cat into Australia. This involved stepping back from the controversy to look at how this case depicts tangled webs of failing governance and deliberation, alongside the problematic consequences of humanities project of modernity and ethical dilemmas at the heart of how we think the world should be.

Savannah Cats are a relatively new (1980s) hybrid domestic cat, breed first in the USA. They are a cross between the Serval, Felis serval, an African wild cat of up to 20kg weight, and Felis catus, the Domestic Cat of up to 7kg in weight on average, topping out with certain breeds at 11kg. The Savannah Cat, dependent on generation, weighs up to 11kg (although unsubstantiated reports state to 18kg). It is further reported that the Savannah has some of the skills of Serval’s, including high intelligence and a strong jumping capability. In the USA, Savannah Cats are legal in some states and illegal in others. There is a proposal to import them into Australia and the Commonwealth Government produced a draft assessment on the importation of the Savannah Cat in June 2008. Against importation are groups like the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). The CRC hold that Australia has a poor record controlling introduced animals and that escaped domestic cats are already a key threatening process to Australia’s wildlife (and so why further exacerbate that with yet another complication to the already difficult to manage domestic cat). For importation are groups like Savannah Cats Australia who hold that the Savannah has an outgoing, predictable personality that is somewhat doglike (eg., can be walked on a leash) and that when on sale the cats will be de-sexed, micro-chipped and only sold to reputable owners. Presiding over this is the (Australian) Vertebrate Pests Committee, a co-ordination body for vertebrate pest policy and planning drawing from a variety of expert bodies, state and commonwealth departments plus the New Zealand government.

Penelope used the Savannah Cat issue to interrogate at least three differing aspects to the complex world we live in: (1) the governance of wildlife-human interactions in Australia; (2) the institutional structure (and failures) of modernity; and, (3) the ethics of how we, deep in our towers of abstraction, manipulate other life without regard to the actual unfolding consequences (and potential pain) for all life of such manipulations. We were confronted in the Forum space with the difficulties of drawing boundaries in regards human-nature inter-relationships of which the Savannah Cat case is replete with examples. We looked into:

• how the debate around the cats resonated with a moral panic that disguises the real complexity, ambiguities and hypocrisies of our inter-relationships with animals;
• the way that the cat was the locus of goods/bads which distracted from how the debate was shaped in various ways by the actors involved;
• how the language used was often full of problematic imagery and ideas that where often irreconcilable and further detracted from opening up discussion;
• how the debate drew heavily on science but could not be settled by science;
• how the regulatory systems informing the debate (especially that embodied in the Vertebrate Pests Committee) were not readily transparent nor easily accountable; and,
• how our ability to overcome the systems level inhibitors on dealing with this and other difficult socio-natural conundrums were poor to non-existent.

Although Penelope is still working on finalising her ideas, the story of Savannah cats and our incapacity to reasonably determine what is right regarding what we can so manifestly do in and to the world is a further cautionary tale on other intractable problems we are currently sunk in.