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!
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.
