Swapping houses and inheriting the cats which hang around the house
I know, I know, that's an odd title for this post. It came to me as I was remembering a conversation I had with my son yesterday.
He and I were discussing the future and I mentioned that at some point (hundreds of years from now, of course) his mother and I would be more comfortable in a smaller, single-story house, instead of the 104+ year old family home. (We've only owned it since 1980, but our two kids grew up here and remember very little about any other homes.) I joking said by that time we wouldn't have Tigra, our present pet, and simply wouldn't get another cat after she's gone.
He joking suggested we would have "automatic" pet cats that require no maintenance, because he has two or three neighborhood cats which live more or less permanently in his large backyard and the crawl space under his house. No cost, no upkeep -- what wonderful pet cats those would be.
Which, of course, started me thinking about the frustrating issue faced by almost all towns and cities in our country: feral cats. Those are cats who have "gone wild" for one reason or another. Some were born to "owner-less," feral cats and are very uncomfortable and frightened to be around people. Some are former pets who were abandoned by their families or strayed away and got separated from their families.
Some communities have a very tough "no-holds-barred" approach to this issue: Feral cats are shot on sight. Others have taken that down a notch and seek to capture feral cats, hold them in case an owner shows up to claim them -- then euthanizes them.
But a few communities have adopted a process suggested by the Human Society of the United States (HSUS), known as "Trap-Neuter-Return," or TNR. The TNR policy means feral cats are captured, vaccinated, and neutered. Their left ear is "tipped" for identification purposes. Then they are returned to "the wild," and monitored by dedicated caretakers -- who also watch for new feral members who show up and repeat the TNR with them.
Do you have any feral cats on your property or in your community? I should modify that to ask if you know of such cats -- because you can be assured they are in almost EVERY community.
Tell us your thoughts and post your comments about feral cats, pet neutering, and the other issues related to this post, please.
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