Four years later, the controversy over whether Wisconsin should allow the killing of feral cats has come to television.

Madison filmmaker Andy Beversdorf’s documentary on the fracas, "Here, Kitty Kitty," hits the airwaves Saturday night on Wisconsin Public Television.

"It was a big fight between the bird people and the cat people that produced a lot of characters who were very passionate about the whole thing, so it made for good cinema," said Beversdorf, 35.

He began filming during the Conservation Congress meetings in 2005 at which Mark Smith of La Crosse suggested free-ranging domestic cats be designated an unprotected species — and thus fair game for hunters.

A majority of Conservation Congress attendees approved Smith’s Question 62, but the advisory body’s executive committee decided to drop it.

Smith, feeling burned by media and turned off by extremists on both sides of the issue, decided not to participate in the documentary.

"I’d pretty much had a crawful by then," he said this week.

Smith had received death threats. Camera crews were knocking on his door. People were calling the mayor and even the Chamber of Commerce, trying to get him fired from the La Crosse Fire Department.

On one side of the issue, Beversdorf interviewed Ted O’Donnell, owner of the three MadCat Pet Supplies stores in Madison who called his charge for cats’ rights "a common sense response to something that lacked common sense."

Also in "Here, Kitty Kitty" are Stan Temple, the UW-Madison professor whose study blaming cats for the deaths of millions of birds was often cited by those who believed the cats were pests, and Gordon King, a retired farmer and self-proclaimed environmentalist who was prosecuted for trapping and drowning cats on his property in Merrill.

In the film, Temple, who never advocated for Smith’s proposal, plays a message on his answering machine. "You cat-murdering bastard," a female voice whispers. "What goes around comes around. I declare Stanley Temple season open."

Smith, 52, said he got the same message, as well as letters from extremists who wanted to shoot the cat lovers.

"I didn’t want anything to do with any of them," he said.

Smith, who still thinks something needs to be done to corral feral cats, said he thinks Beversdorf’s documentary is fair.

"I kind of wish I’d talked to him," he said. "He didn’t pick sides and didn’t beat anybody up."