As you know, we have several 'porch' cats residing in our front yard. We 'acquired' them when a rather eccentric neighbor passed on and Animal Control wasn't able to apprehend the many, many cats he had been accumulating in his house. Although his cat population had slowed down a bit over the last few years, it was still too many. We have left out water for the remaining wandering cats because we can't stand to see an animal suffer in this heat. We give them a bit of kibble once a day as two of them are still almost babies. All along, we have been trying to find homes for them and managed to place four of the kittens which leaves us now with one mother cat, one pregnant mother cat, and two half grown tom cat kittens.
When we ran out of options for finding them homes with friends or neighbors, we went to PetSmart on their adoption day to inquire. I went up to the woman in charge of the cages of dogs being offered and before I could finish my inquiry about the cats, she cut me off with, "Too many cats and we can't take any!" I started to ask her another question and she deliberately picked up her cell phone, dialed, and started a conversation with someone.
I took to the computer and gathered information and phone numbers of cat rescue places. They all have wonderful web pages with soft, sweet words about not leaving a cat behind . . . until you call them and about half of them are rude when they find out you don't WANT a cat but have cats that need homes and suggest you look some more of take them to the shelter. Yes, I know there are an abundance of kittens, right now, but if you purport to be kindly disposed to them, wouldn't you be a little more helpful in making suggestions on where one might find a place? One answering machine message was great when it said to press one if you want to adopt a cat and not very friendly when you pressed two and they said they do not want to take your cat off your hands, thank you very much. Okay, not in that many words but not well-phrased, either.
I ran across an on-line petition demanding changes in how animals are treated/put down at the local humane society. Seems they are not exactly euthanizing the animals as kindly as possible but as quickly and cheaply as possible. And, that is the one in our county we'd have to take the cats. And, sadly, that is probably going to happen next week. I'm heartbroken, naturally, as it is difficult to hand healthy, feisty cats over to this ending.
Anyway, you can be sure that after getting the responses and lack of helpful information from most of these other places, we aren't likely to donate to any of their causes. Besides, we've certainly put in enough time and money, already, taking care of a cat problem not of our making.
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