Yesterday morning we had a cat lounging on the porch--not our cat, not any cat we know, just a visiting cat. Yes, it is cute, and yes, it is young but we have a cat and one demanding feline is all we can handle. My husband (the softie) wanted to feed it because "it looks hungry". I nixed that idea since if you feed a stray cat it becomes your cat and within a few days we would have two cats napping on the sofa. Twice the cat food, twice the flea medicine, and twice the vet bills for yearly shots and checkup. We could go broke! But it is cute . . . .
No Sjoerd, we did not feed the cat. We are trying to hold firm. We are quickly becoming "cat central". Yesterday we had another visitor. This one isn't skittish at all, and seems to have made friends with Timi. It must be a neighbor's cat since it is well filled out and not afraid of humans. Please Lord, no more cats!!!
Marlin— hahaha….”Cat Central”. Oh dear. My oma was a soft touch for unwanted cats. It was so bad that once someone threw a cat into their front yard and drove away. In the end she had fourteen ! Only one was allowed inside their house. I can still remember looking from my grandparent’s house over across the field to the barn and seeing my grandfather walking to the house, a milk pail in each hand and a string of cats following along behind, single file like ducks…the late afternoon sun highlighting their expectant little bodies. What an idyll.
My mother-in-law was the same. She really couldn't afford to feed all the cats that people "dumped off" at the farm, but she couldn't stand to see them go hungry. When she died, animal control came with cages. They brought 3 cages on 5 different occassions and caught approximately 125 cats !!
Anniekay, 125 cats! Perhaps we aren't so bad off after all. We still don't want any more, and definitely not over a hundred cats.
Cats are great hunters they keep those ground critters away around here. I need some cats ASAP. I haven’t seen a stray around in quite a long time other than the bobcat visits. Finding scat and big paw prints in the powder like soil. Probably why no kitty cats are coming by.
Bobcats eat kitty cats. I lost 4 cats in as many years to them. Paw prints by my barn , cat hair, blood and screaming in the night. Don't get cats.
I had adopted a pregnant stray cat. I think someone dumped her off. She had 5 kittens so I got her and all the kittens fixed. I had lots of Bobcats roaming the land around our farm and one-by-one my cats got taken. You would think that they wouldn't eat their own kind but they do. Only the females survived.
We get a lot of feral cats here, although fewer recently. They are wormy (I know, I've seen them. not fun when they defecate in the potato trench.), scrawny, scruffy, and may have other diseases (feline leukemia virus and FIV). And could have toxoplasmosis. As someone who has been on over a decade of chemotherapy, and has impaired immune response, I don't like that other people let their cats roam and defecate / urinate in my garden to potentially spread diseases to me. I don't know what predator sometimes kills my chickens, but feral or stray cats are on the list, You can't stop dogs from eating cat feces. So that 's a concern as well. They have an important predator role. This area was much more overrun with rodents before the cats arrived. But also, the bird population seems smaller now. I try to keep the peace, so I don't say anything. I was a bit interested once, to see my bird-lover neighbor in a shouting argument with my feral cat-loving neighbor. I stayed out of it. Also, my neighbor who raises cats and various types of domestic fowl, confided in me that he traps any cats on his property, and takes them to the humane society. That might explain why there are fewer of them now. To be honest, I told him that's fine with me, he's doing a public service, Before adopting, I think a vet check and making sure it is spayed or neutered, vaccinated and dewormed, is a good idea. Could be expensive, though.
@Daniel W I don't know about where you live but, every place I've ever lived they do spay and neuter any animals that the humane society, private rescues, and city or county animal control agencies intend to put up for addoption. They have vets that give them a cut rate on that and shots, worming, etc. It's all included in the adoption fee.
