i am such a sucker!!!!

[mom wewantchicks!]

well i finally did it, i fed the stray cat that has been lurking around for a week or two. at first i thought it was my own spoiled little kittys tearing in the trash,but after a night or two of making sure nothing could get into it, i saw it, a half grown orange and white tabby. i tried to ignore it thinking ok it will go back from where it came,well after a few days og watching "her" i dont think shes leaving.my cats chase her a little but i quess not enough! so tonight after watching her scarf up some old fries out of the car i had to do it!! i put all my brats in the house and feed her. she is sooooo scared, jumping at every noise and inhaling the food. she appears to be in good health. my dh is going to kill me! i wont tell him of the plan i have to capture and spay/nueter her and let her live here. shhhhhhh!!!!

 

[PitterPaws]

mums the word It will take a while for her to be less scared of you but it will happen I had a cat show up a beautiful black and white and it took about a week before he would even let me touch him. but he was there every evening like clockwork for his food, he was so skinny when he first showed up and he turned into a beautiful cat. Good Luck post pictures if you can.

 

[MissPrissy]

The year we bought our property there was a round up of 150 stray cats and kittens from our corner acreage. Every once in a while we get a mass of wildish cats. We set traps and take them to the shelter. I can't feed dozens of cats and kittens. Good on you for planning to have it fixed.

 

[Sparklecoon]

I wish more people were as responsible as you. When we first moved into the neighborhood were in (movign out shortly Yea!) There were dozens of cats every where because no one would speuter their cats. I can't tell you how many times I've watched litters that started out at 6 kittens dwindle down to only 1-2 or found the poor bodies of little starved cats. It's very sad and a bad way to go IMHO.

We also used to hear cat fights all the time. It's not a fun thing to wake up too. Recently there has been a rash of FIV and Feline leukemia decimating the population. It's all very sad. Simple vaccinations and spay/neuter would save alot of these cats. There would be less to feed, they'd wander away from home less (fewer dead on the side of the road), have immunity to certain contagious feline diseases, etc. THe worst thing about it is that there is a low low cost spay neuter program. $15-20 bucks and you can have your cat fixed. Around here if someone held off on a couple packs of cigerettes they could get it done.

When I move out to our new property I'm looking into adopting a feral cat/kitten from rescue as a mouser and you can bet they'll be thuroghly vetted prior to stepping foot on my property.

 

[arlee453]

Yep - I agree completely, sparkle.

I have 3 barn cats - they are semi tame - at least they will come up to me to be fed. BUT I have caught them and taken them in to be spayed & rabies shots. I don't mind feeding them, but I DO mind feeding their 100s of offspring.

I've seen first hand what happens when someone starts feeding a cat that wanders up.

**SAD, LONG STORY ALERT***

My sister had a cat like that - she showed up on their stoop and they started feeding her. Fast forward about 5 year...

They had at least 80-100 cats roaming around their place. She was feeding 40 lb of dry food a week, PLUS canned food. They were very well fed feral cats that kept on multiplying. BUT I wouldn't call them healthy - they all had runny eyes, sneezing all the time, etc.

They had cats living under the house, IN the house, all around the house. Under their travel trailer...IN their outbuildings. Kittens EVERYWHERE. In the spring there would be dead kittens, live kittens, just born kittens, half grown kittens. And all those cats do a LOT of peeing and pooping. Literally, when you pulled up to their place and opened your car door you got a huge wiff of cat urine. It pervaded EVERYTHING around their house. I don't know how they stood it, frankly. If they had lived where there were neighbors, they would have had the health dept after them, I'm sure. I know I would have called if I had to live next to them!

Anyway....her husband decided he needed another woman and their marriage deteriorated. I helped her move out. They had 2 adults cats and a litter of 4 kittens they had bottle raising in their house. EVERYTHING was sprayed with urine. It smelled so bad in there that my nose was burning within just a few min of trying to help her pack up. They had overflowing litter boxes all over the place. One was in front of the couch where they sat. The cats had tracked the poop out of the box and it was cemented into the carpet. It was really disgusting, and I have a VERY high threshold for dirty houses as I live in one myself. BUT there at least are not any animal feces ground into the floor...

She just HAD to take 3 of the 6 cats that lived in the house with her to the new place. It was one adult female cat (not the momma) and 2 of the 4 babies in the litter she had just bottle raised. One girl and one boy cat. Don't think I didn't ask her why she didn't take all GIRL cats. I had an idea that having mixed genders was NOT going to be a good thing. It was around the first of the year at this point.

I gave her large (think collie size) metal crates to keep the cats in while she wasn't home. This was the deal with the landlord (who was a friend of hers and usually didn't allow pets). She would keep the cats up when she wasn't home to keep them from tearing up the place. The kittens were about 10 wks old when she moved. I asked her about getting them fixed. She said she'd get the boy neutered and that would solve the problem...sounded like a good plan...I wasn't 100% convinced she'd follow through.

Well a couple months later, she had a new boyfriend and wasn't staying at her place much anymore. I asked her about the boy. She hadn't gotten around yet to get him neutered. OK... I offered to PAY FOR IT and take him to the clinic here where I live. She never got around to it - too busy with her new man I guess.

You can guess the rest of the story. By summer time, the older female cat had a litter of kittens.

By another month or two the younger female cat had a litter of kittens.

In another couple of months, the older cat had another litter of kittens.

She now had 12 cats running around a RENTED place, peeing everywhere because she isn't staying there anymore anyway, in a house that belongs to a FRIEND of hers who ONLY let her have the cats in the first place because she felt sorry for her with all the crap going on with the ex husband.

Come Christmas time she has to have some surgery. While she was in the hospital, her boyfriend came and took care of the cats for her - meaning he got rid of them. I want to believe he took them all to the pound, at least, rather than a more inhumane method.

I can't talk to her about it - it makes me SOOOO MAD! There should NEVER had been ONE litter of kittens, much less another. I offered again to take the cat to get him neutered after the first litter AND pay for it....again...but she never got around to it.

So because of stupidity on a human's part, 12 cats ended up dying, AND she lost a friendship (I'd been a bit mad too if my friend had left my rental place like she did - REEKING of cat pee and with petrified poop ground into the carpet).

I can only wonder what happened to the 80 or so left when she moved out of the house. I'm betting her loser ex-hubby used them for target practice. I'm SURE he wasn't shelling out $40 a week to feed them anymore...

Bottom line - if you can't get those wild cats spayed or neutered, then catch them and take them to animal control. PLEASE dont' let this happen to you!

 

[Love my Critters!]

It's okay to be a sucker once in a while. I have it tatooed on my forehead lol. One thing I was going to mention was that most orange and white tabbies are males. It is unusual, but not impossible, to get a female, but most of the time they are males. It is due to the genetics of getting that coloring. So to have the cat neutered will be cheaper than if it is a female. Anyway, you did the best thing for that cat. Good for you!!!

 

[mom wewantchicks!]

well im gald to hear "she" may be a he!!! i have never heard that one before! i was just going by the small build and fact its not being aggresive with my female spayed "million dollar" cats as my dh calls them! oh and on to him, i tell him last night that i broke down and feed the bugger and he say "well you cant have that d@!$ thing starving and tearing up garbage!" which is my wonderfull husband way of saying that he doesnt mind!! of course 8 years and at least 50 cats later he should be used to it!!! just to clarify we do not have 50 cats but i will catch,spay nueter and rehome and kitty lucky enough to be dropped on my door!! im hoping he will come around in a week or two so i can get ahold of him, if not the humane society has a live trap i will rent and take him in to be fixed. as soon as i can get some pics i'll poat them!!!

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Thats what we do, people have dropped cats off here and we spay or nueter them.
I noticed that awhile back about the orange cat thing, out of tons and tons of cats we have only ever had one orange female.

 

[mom wewantchicks!]

well first off i had a total "duh!" moment! one of our "house" cats (they all go in and out!) is a female, orange and white long haired notailed tabby!!! so im not so assured this one is not a girl! but, i feed the poor thing and havent seen it for 2 nights!!! i dont see it onthe road and asked neighbors if they had lost a cat (yeah right!) but nothing! i put out food last night and something ate it but im not so sure it was the stray,as there was a little food left in the bowl (im quessing one of my piggys) anyway i feel bad, i hope it didnt get, well dead or hurt! i also hope its not linguring around, id rather tame it down, catch it and get it to the vet asap. well if it comes back, you all will be the first to know!!