How many cats do you have in your barn/yard/etc?

[scrambledmess]

So I have an outside cat. I have kept meaning to have her spayed, but something always came up. I didn't worry about it too much. I never noticed her coming into heat. There are 5 huge dogs on our road and only 3 houses. I have NEVER seen another cat.... The next closest house is 3 miles away.

Well.. Yellow Cat (yes that is her name) is pregnant. ~sighs~ I figured, if the kittens survive, I will just have them all fixed and keep them. Is that too many to have in the barn? I mean I know I can feed them. But I don't want them straying away. How about too many males in one place? I don't want to here cat fights all night...

I am just kicking myself right now. I would have rather filled my barn with rescues, now I have just added to the pet population....

 

[DAS]

We have six cats-all fixed- 3 females and 3 males. They are indoor/outdoor and come and go as they please. The only ones that fight are the females. I have a little 8lb female who thinks she's a lion.

She's also the best mouser I have!

 

[wordgirl]

We have three outdoor cats – they don't come inside (my Dad's allergic). Two (unspayed) females and one (neutered) male. We live in the middle of farmland, and the cats do go some ways from the house, but not miles and miles. They usually come when I call them.

(I taught them 'HERE, kittykittykitty!' for dinnertime, and now they come when they hear it. The girls also come when I call the chickens sometimes....

)

If you neuter your boys, they won't roam like unneutered tomcats. I don't think neutered males fight, but I'm not sure.

Don't feel too bad. Even if you'd rather not keep them, I'm sure there are lots of people who would be willing to fix them and give them wonderful homes.

 

[phoenixmama]

Quote:
They won't roam...but they sure will fight.

I have two, Frank and Zoe. They will continue to have a warm place to sleep and free food to eat as long as they continue killing scorpions and peeing where they are supposed to. I'm not exactly a "cat person". I'm allergic, but I put up with them because they have a job.

 

[squeakyballs]

Two... sort of. They just appeared last year. They hate people, so we mutually ignore each other. I'd prefer it if they went somewhere else - I'm allergic, I worry about them eating a chicken, I don't want poop in the sandbox, and I hate feeling like I should feel responsible for them. And for some reason I feel guilty for not feeding them.

I like to think that they belong to one of the neighbors and just use our yard as their hunting ground... I just can't see such skittish cats having homes.

 

[Akane]

I've never had neutered males fight anything but a stray male or newly introduced male. The ones we've had grow up together and after intros were perfectly fine.

Growing up we tried not to have more than 3 barn cats and an indoor/outdoor cat or 2. If we got to that point cats got adopted out to be pets or transferred to someone else's barn. Here I have 2 indoor/outdoor cats and I will not accept more. I'd rather be done by one.

 

[Bleenie]

I just have 1 Siamese, Merlin. She's an inside/outside kitty & only a good mouser when she's in heat or has babies

She has a spay appointment this month..im sick of her bringing in live mice, i just wanted to slap her last night..i had to catch one in an old coffee can, after she let it go for the SECOND time

 

[CoyoteMagic]

I now have 6! Plus a dog that thinks she is a cat. 2 are indoor outdoor cats. All are fixed. Everybody argues from time to time. But they don't stray. My big male wasn't fixed when he showed up on our doorstep. Since he has been fixed, he doesn't spray, he doesn't stray, and is the most passive of my oldest 3.

 

[Crazyland]

When I was a kid we adopted some stray cats. We lived in Hawaii and nobody wanted to mess with their pets and taking them back home with them. Patches and her two boys came first. Smokey and Pirate never fought and they never got fixed. In the end we had 11 cats and kittens. All of them stayed in Hawaii too.

We were going to take the two boys with us but they ran down a storm drain and didn't want to come out.

Now I have one girl. I too am allergic and she of course has chosen me to be THE ONE. As soon as she is spayed she will be an outdoor cat. I may eventually get one more kitten to be her companion outdoors.

 

[dntd]

We have two cats one we chose the other chose us. Both fixed females, one is for sure almost 9 the other I have no idea but we think about the same age, they are mainly outdoor cats only coming in when it's cold out.