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Technically you are legally responsible for their care if you are feeding them, so you have to decide if you can do that or if you will do what little you can. At my old place I started feeding the feral colony and made friends with almost all of them, one moved in to the house and is now a very happy indoor cat. I am with you, my cats are indoors only (except the one that is sometimes taken out on a harness.).
I'm a little surprised I'm the first to ask but what do you meqn when you say you think the siamese has mental problems? Is that the main thing keeping you from inviting them to be indoor kitties, or are you just at your limit as far as how many indoor kitties you can have?
It's just so sad, how one animal is loved and cared for and safe, and another animal, equally deserving really, will be utterly alone, in danger of starvation and all kinds of other horrors, and no love at all. It just seems profoundly unfair.
And by feeding it, without taking responsibility for it, you are dooming it to an extended life of misery, instead of a possibly shortened life of misery. That is, if you choose to humanize the situation.
It's also possible that the stray is an unneutered male, who spends most of what's left of his life boinking every female in the pride, strutting around like he owns the joint, getting a dozen cats pregnant multiple times over the course of a couple of years, thus increasing the colony from just a few, to a few dozen, and eventually to a few hundred, and potentially a few thousand (depending on who ELSE is feeding them).
And of course - if you start feeding cats from kittenhood, then they don't learn how to feed themselves. And should you move, or get sick, or just decide to stop feeding them, then it is you who are directly responsible for them starving to death because you never taught them how to hunt, and they never had to learn, because you'd been feeding them from their kittenhood.
Feeding an animal is a responsibility. It's not "doing something kind" for another animal. It is binding you to that animal for the rest of its life. If you look at it in any other way, then you're only doing what satisfies your ego, and not doing what is best for the animal.
In the case of a feral colony or even a single feral cat - what's best for it is to have it trapped, neutered, and released. What's worst for it is feeding it, and doing nothing else for it. What's most natural for it - is to just leave it alone.
It's hard but I don't feed stray cats-living in Florida-I cannot believe how many animals are running around-literally it makes me sick.
Oh, I know. I live in Florida too and we must have 100 ferals living in the woods in the industrial park where my shop is. So very sad. There is a very nice Oriental lady who feeds about 30 of them every morning and she has gotten all of them spayed/neutered. Such a wonderful thing to do.
Here are 3 of the 4 we got adopted out. I trapped the mom and kept her in my shop office until they were of adopting age. She is now fixed so the cycle for her will end. She was just too feral to get adopted out, but I still feed her every night.
i would care for the cats in a shed and keep them there and put up lost cat signs and if no one responds in the next few weeks or months i would keep them or take them to a rescue or a friend who wants one.
I'm a little surprised I'm the first to ask but what do you meqn when you say you think the siamese has mental problems? Is that the main thing keeping you from inviting them to be indoor kitties, or are you just at your limit as far as how many indoor kitties you can have?
~Katy
She bounces around outside, flees in terror at quick movements on my part, and doesn't behave rationally. I've seen this before in cats. She's either been abused, or maybe was abandoned because of her behavior.
I've seen cats that were mentally deranged before, hyperactive, irrational, and while there may be some physical cause that is curable, sometimes I do think there is a brain dysfunction of some sort.
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There is a very nice Oriental lady who feeds about 30 of them every morning and she has gotten all of them spayed/neutered. Such a wonderful thing to do.
