There Needs to Be Something Else

The Stray Cat Problem

I’m frustrated. Like - really frustrated. And anxious and worried and… All day Saturday I was just - “oh no, they’re doing it again…” as I saw out my window the stray cats mating in my yard. I have 9 strays - 5 girls and 4 boys. Actually I haven’t seen one of the girls for over a week now and am wondering if she’s okay, so maybe 4 girls. Still - 4 girls that are now pregnant in my yard. It’s my fault. I feed them. I started feeding cats years ago when we moved here. I don’t know how it happened. At the time I had 2 inside cats. We ended up getting some strays I’d put food out for on our back porch. Fortunately they seemed to be boys and I didn’t have any problems. Our house burned down 9 years ago, and one of the few strays remained. He stuck around even after the others left. We were living elsewhere for a short while til we got another house back on the property; but it was a possibility a couple of my inside cats had gotten outside during the fire as they were never found among the dead, so daily I came back and called for them and looked around the property. This cat was still here. So we bought food for him and would leave a bowl. When we got our new house in and moved in and got a new inside cat - he was still out there. I was still putting out a bowl for him. I brought him inside a couple months later, but we had gained a cat so I continued to put food out. A girl came and yes, had kittens. The neighbors wanted them and said they would take care of the two girl ones, so I brought the girl cat in and had her spayed and thought there would be no more cats to deal with - except the neighbors didn’t take care of the cats, and they came over to eat and thus began the kitten problem. Except it wasn’t really too bad. They would wander off after a time and the number wouldn’t be too outrageous. I’ve had up to the teens before. I’ve brought in two more kittens over time, the newest being last summer, making my number inside 5, and I pretty much really should stop there. I had 10 in the other house. I know how it can be. Cats are territorial, and too many can stress them out. There are some that don’t get along that you have to separate for quite some time before they do actually get along for whatever reason. I loved my cats that passed in the fire - but I don’t want to go there again. 5 is plenty. The one I brought in who remained after the fire is very old now, possibly blind. Best to keep inside numbers low. And outside ones, too, but… As I said, there are at least 4 pregnant females in my yard. Just thinking about how many kittens that is going to be makes me feel faint. I’m panicking. I have other neighbors that I know wouldn’t care for a billion cats messing around and pooing in their yards. What am I going to do?? People like me, we love cats and care so we feed them and end up in this nightmare of a spot. I’ve been Googling, trying to find places I can take kittens because I’m not good at giving them away. Not that I hate to see them go. I can give them away just fine. It’s just that I’m not a salesman personality. I’m shy and just not good at it like others are. I tried facebook last year a couple times with the 6 kittens that were here then and got maybe 3 likes. Which made me angry. You guys aren’t helping me by liking this post!! You’re supposed to respond by saying yes, I would love to have one of your kittens!! Twice. Same thing each time. We have a county animal shelter, but they euthanize, so that’s not even an option with me. The website says “as a last resort.” Okay. No. Our county had a TSNR group that seems to have fizzled out as I can find them nowhere online. And they were no help anyway. I called them about 4 years ago when I needed their help. They put me at the bottom of a waiting list. I called again later. “You have 80 people in front of you, so… We’ll get to you when we can.” They facebook messaged me a few days later telling me to please be patient, it was very slow-going, and there are only a few vets they can work with as they can’t use the ones in Ohio (I live near the border where there are some vets over there, too.) So I did try to be patient; and they never came, and I’ve had litters of kittens since then by the same two girl cats I had til last year when some girls were born. I needed the help when I called!! Last year there were 6 new kittens. One disappeared, nothing but an ear left behind, which was very strange and creepy. I took one in because I thought she was very sick. One was a boy and that left 3 girls plus the 2 adult girls. All the sanctuaries are far away, and I’m not so sure they would take 4 to 5 litters of kittens. It seems they just take cats like if you want to surrender your cat or something. Or they help shelters out by taking on some cats to adopt out. They don’t really seem to want just cats from the public, and especially not a billion of them at once, like I’m going to have. What is there left to do??

You can put a sign out at the end of your driveway saying “Free Kittens!!!!!!!” but I read online that this invites people who want cats for nefarious reasons. Some people give them to research labs or even feed them to their pet snakes!! Oh my word. The website said to charge a small fee for the kittens, but who is going to pay for kittens for giveaway along the road?? My hopes aren’t up that I could even get rid of one or two (though I may try anyway). “Free” is your key word here to getting rid of the cats. It’s a very important word. “Kittens for $2 each” just doesn’t seem to work.

I was looking at a website that told how to get rid of unwanted animals by various ways, starting with kittens. There were “lethal” and “unlethal” ways. Reminded me of how mom would tell me dad would throw bags of kittens in the river when he was young. I thought how horrible, but now that I’m older it was probably one of the “lethal” ways of kitty control on his dad’s farm. I read in “Anne of Avonlea,” second part of the “Anne of Green Gables” series, that Anne tried to chloroform a cat; but it didn’t work, and she ended up having a loving pet. I figure chloroforming was mentioned but I didn’t want to look at the kitten-killing stuff. I scrolled on through a bit and saw where was told that to get rid of lots of unwanted fish you can flush them down the toilet. On down some more the writer of the site told about how to get rid of unwanted wildlife with pictures of various rifles. This site was making me uncomfortable, so I clicked off.

So - what are we cat lovers supposed to do with an overabundance of kitties?? We need somewhere we can take them, no matter the number, where they won’t be killed, where they will be looked after and taken care of, adopted out to good loving homes, but where is this?? That’s what we want for them, but we can’t do it ourselves when there’s no place around like this. Shelters are full up. They don’t want the 20 or so that I myself am going to have to get rid of, much less the many others in my situation. One?? Maybe they’ll take that one if they have room. And as I said, if they euthanize it’s not even an option for me anyway. Do shelters know how many people they’re turning away with animals by euthanizing?? Yeah, they get full and there’s nothing else to do. What do other countries do?? I’ve heard we’re the only country who does it. But I understand a building is only so big. What CAN you do?? That is a problem I don’t know the answer to. If I did, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Right now I’m just praying for a miracle.