Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We live in a residential neighborhood that has a serious feral cat problem. The lady who lives on our left feeds about 17 stray cats and has 5 or 6 who stay inside. She spays the females she is able to tame, but she does not trap and spay the ones who stay wild and does not neuter the males. Our end of the street smells like a litter box and a lot of the kittens you see around are sickly and disappear–presumably from intestinal parasites and disease. Several years ago I started trapping and spaying some of them at our local humane society. The HS vet offered to keep some of the kittens because she thought they were adoptable and the neighbor got a bit miffed at me for leaving them at the HS “because they were so cute.” Another one I trapped and spayed she ended up keeping as one of her house cats. Another of the cats had 5 kittens in her house and she kept all of them. I decided I was just going to stay out of it because I was taking vacation hours to take them to the vet and pick them up and it didn’t feel like I was getting anything done.
Now, on the other side of us a young couple moved in in February of this year. They had what appeared to be about an a year-old intact male cat. He immediately began spending all of his time yowling on our driveway and aggravating our three cats (all rescues, all spayed/neutered). Unbeknownst to me until later, another neighbor trapped him and took him to the pound. The cat situation has neighbors on edge around here.
A couple of months ago the young couple got two more kittens. They kept them in the house at first, but then started letting them outside. The woman is expecting a baby soon and her husband works out of town in some sort of two-week-on, one-week-off pattern. When he’s out of town, she often leaves town for a week or two at a time, presumably staying with her family somewhere else. She's planning on delivering her baby in the other town.
This last time she left town, about a week ago, she left the cats, a male and female who are about six months old, outside. There was a bowl of food and some water out, but both were empty and I’ve been feeding the cats for about 3 days now. I was talking to another neighbor about it and how ticked I was at their irresponsibility and how I knew the female would be coming into heat soon and we’d have another litter of kittens running around. From conversations I’ve had with the couple I know money is tight and about a month ago when I said “your cat will need spaying soon” the woman was non-committal.
Sooooo.......today I took both of the cats to my vet to be spayed and neutered. When I pick them up tomorrow I have a place for them in a big dog crate in our garage to recuperate for a couple of days.
Did I do the right thing? On the one hand, I think I did, not only because of the cat problem in our neighborhood, but because of the number of unwanted animals in general. On the other hand, I feel like a very pushy, bossy, neighbor who maybe should have just minded her own business.
Hard to judge at this stage. Her non-committal response could have been financially motivated or it could have indicate her ambivalence toward neutering animals. If the former, then you did good both as a concerned citizen and helpful neighbor. If the latter, then no. You may have gone against her wishes with her 'property' and forced your wishes on her against her will.
What is done is done though. I would probably just never mention the subject and wait to see if she ever notices what has happened.
I think you did. I had a neighbor that let his cat roam. So I took him to my vet, registered him as a feral or stray and had him neutered.
The way I see it, he came in my yard and sprayed all over creation. They didn't care about him enough to vet him, so I did. If they cared about him, and his altered or unaltered status, they'd have taken better care of him.
For the record, owners never even noticed. *rolls eyes*
Hard to judge at this stage. Her non-committal response could have been financially motivated or it could have indicate her ambivalence toward neutering animals. If the former, then you did good both as a concerned citizen and helpful neighbor. If the latter, then no. You may have gone against her wishes with her 'property' and forced your wishes on her against her will.
What is done is done though. I would probably just never mention the subject and wait to see if she ever notices what has happened.
I agree with this .. most folks wont even notice !.. AND this crossed my mind to maybe she wanted them to "run away" and so left them outside to do so ..
Yeah, I wasn't going to say anything. But if they come home while the female has stitches in her abdomen I'm pretty sure they'll notice. If they ask I'll just tell the truth and if they're mad, oh well. It'll still be one less female cat reproducing and one less male cat spraying and fighting.
Morally, yes, I think you did the right thing. However, I also think that you may have broken the law.
A better solution would have been to call Animal Care and Control and report the irresponsible behavior rather than taking matters into your own hands, vigilante style.
FWIW, I think you did the right thing. I know of someone who did that years ago and presumably the 'owner' never knew. The same might be true here. IMO you did the responsible thing, they may suspect but maybe not and as she's expecting a baby very soon and these kittens are getting minimal care and attention as it is, preventing another litter was a good thing (not to mention the female c/h come into season any time). Just out of curiousity, did they ever find out about their missing cat (who hopefully was neutered and rehomed) - ?
yes you step way over the line. there was much better ways for you to go about seeing if your neighbor would be spaying their pets. just because you are fed up with the feral cat population in your area does not mean you can spay your neighbors cats when they are out of town. you should have waited till they were back home. explained to them that the cats food bowl was empty. remind them that other animals come around and can eat the food. your time and money would be better spent going back to take care of the feral cats. trap them and take them to the aspca. this was vigilante justice and you had no right IMO. it is up to an owner to spay and neuter their animals. the means does not justify the end, even if the cats should be neutered.
yes you step way over the line. there was much better ways for you to go about seeing if your neighbor would be spaying their pets. just because you are fed up with the feral cat population in your area does not mean you can spay your neighbors cats when they are out of town. you should have waited till they were back home. explained to them that the cats food bowl was empty. remind them that other animals come around and can eat the food. your time and money would be better spent going back to take care of the feral cats. trap them and take them to the aspca. this was vigilante justice and you had no right IMO. it is up to an owner to spay and neuter their animals. the means does not justify the end, even if the cats should be neutered.
I'm guessing you've never lived in a neighborhood that was filled with feral/outdoor, unfixed cats. As someone who has suffered -- and I do mean suffered -- from this problem, I can tell you that you get to the point where you see the cats as "abandoned" and not only feel free to do what's necessary to rectify the situation, but feel compelled to do so. We literally couldn't get a night's sleep from all the howling and yowling. My work suffered, my health suffered, my stress level was through the roof. My vegetable garden and back yard were filled with cat $h!t, I had to trap the kittens, pay to get them fixed, pay for their shots, feed them and find them homes.
Frankly, the only thing I'd've done differently from the OP (who still very well could), is to just keep the cats and find them new homes where they'll be properly cared for. If you let your pets roam free and they go missing, too bad, so sad, you lost them.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
