It's been a good decade for outdoor cats in the nation's capital: veterinary care, community support. But now the local government is proposing to kill them.

The plan is laid out in a draft Wildlife Action Plan, put out last month by the District Department of the Environment, that designates feral cats as an "invasive species."  

There's also a call in the proposed plan for "revisiting" a longstanding program through which the Washington Humane Society -- D.C.'s city shelter -- gives the cats veterinary care, and then returns most of them back to their colonies.

It's making folks who love cats worry that a return to the bad old days of euthanizing Washington's feral cats instead of caring for them may be at hand.

There is no need to kill perfectly healthy animals for no reason at all. We hope that the district does not carry through with its plan to kill thousands of healthy cats.