A cat lover has to get rid of an unwanted aggressive stray

He could have castrated it, had it returned and then dumped it. As far as I’m concerned that was the ethical bare minimum standard for the situation described.

Though, as I stated earlier, I think he should have tried to get it placed as a barn cat after the neutering. Yet another action that the OP didn’t even try to explore.

I thought about mentioning this. As a new type of cat door would keep the feral cat outside. However, the OP did say the above about having his outdoor cat hurt.

Course, once the cat was neutered and the hormones dissipated, the cat might not have been so aggressive to the OP’s cat.

But we’ll never know, will we?

There’s a difference between being a cat lover and being a lover of your own cats.

Just because someone qualifies as the latter, doesn’t mean someone is the former.

And, I have to copy that over to save to use for my blog. Because that’s perfect for one of my Notebooks pieces.

The Humane Society isn’t a government branch, but Animal Control is, and (in my neck of the woods, Michigan) they will take trapped cats off your hands for free. Oddly if you try to give them your own cat (or a dead friend’s cat), they’ll want to charge you money (I witness this while renewing my dog’s license last time).

Here in China I bring the neighborhood feral cats to work and let them free. I’m hopeful that 8 km is enough that they’ll die or find a new home or get hit by a car before returning to my neighborhood. There must be about 30 more because some inconsiderate bastard in the past let her cats run around the neighborhood creating colonies of these loud, nasty bastards.

I certainly won’t spend my own money fixing someone else’s cat.

:rolleyes: Good grief. What a shitty thing to do to the cat, the kittens that he will spawn, and any people who will now have to deal with him. Pretty much any option would’ve been better than the one you chose. You must’ve posted just to piss off people.

Shoulda just dropped the cage into the nearest trough of water.
No need to spend money on a cat like that - it needs to be gone ASAP

Drowning seems a little cruel and while I personally wouldn’t care if the OP did that (it’s just a cat, and most people would agree it needed to be put down), I’m sure people here would come down on him even harder if he had chosen that particular method.

This is the kind of situation where firearms would come in handy, if you had some. Perfectly humane way to do it, if a bit messy. Obviously the best “humane” option is to get it euthanized by injection somewhere, but I doubt most places will just do that for free, as the chemicals and staff etc. are certainly not. But if it is free then yeah, that would be option #1.

But yeah, releasing it while alive and well (which I suspect had something to do with the OP’s idea of being somehow ethical or humane in not killing it) is way worse than killing it would have been, for reasons already mentioned.

It was just interesting to me, that with all the animal love groups advertising on TV, and on line, and I contribute, which makes me get even more mail and email, there was NO ONE, including the Humane Society and several rescue organizations, that would take this Cujo cat off my hands. And seriously, this was an evil evil being. All of the neighborhood is so relieved. This fucker walked around growling like a rabid Rottweiler. It tore up the head of one dog when it was walking on the top of the concrete wall, and the dog leapt at it. It just tore into that dog’s head and wouldn’t let go. Cats were afraid to go out into their yards. This thing would sit outside my bedroom window, where the cats and I slept and just growl for hours. Once it got into my car. I’d left the windows open and got in to close them. It was sitting on the floor on the passenger side and wouldn’t go away! I shouted and waved my arms but nothing. My boyfriend had to get a broom and beat at it to make it leave. Growling the whole time.

Everyone said shoot the damn thing. But we didn’t want to, we wanted to be humane. But there’s no way we were spending any $$ to rid ourselves of this thing. We’d rented the live trap, and when I return it, I’m going to tell them they ought to rent them with a warning.

48Willys, sorry. If you’re up around Jomax, and you hear growling and see a grey cat, kill it quick.

Given your description of the cats behavior, your stance is irrational. It’s hard to adopt even nice cats simply because there are so freaking many of them. Note that someone upthread said that his/her shelter euthanizes 4 out of 5 cats that come in their doors. A cat with the issues you describe is completely unadoptable (except perhaps as a barn cat). That’s why nobody would take it off your hands.

You wanted to be humane but in the end you were not. Since you were concerned with spending money on the cat, you should have spent $ for a bullet or two rather than $$ for the humane trap. I hope this is a case of ignorance fought for you.

Yup. Next time he gets to use his Xmas Glock. Just that shooting a trapped cat just seems so damn wrong.

I also don’t think its the best way to off a cat, but like you say - the cat needed to be gone, I don’t own a gun and there would be no way I’d be spending the sort of money required to have a vet euthanise it. Not on a stray cat.

It’s not great, but when you’re weighing several unpleasant options with no good outcome, you go with the least unpleasant. Speaking as someone who volunteered for more than a decade in dog rescue - I have tons of compassion and empathy for animals, but I also strive to be realistic. It sadly does sometimes come down to a choice between a fast death and a slow death. When that happens, pick the fast death.

(Just to be clear, in this case I’m thinking that the slow death option was the high likelihood of the cat catching (if he didn’t already have) a horribly painful disease like feline leukemia and dying a slow, agonizing death in the desert. Now, if he’s lucky, something will eat him but that’s not as quick as a bullet, either.)

Around here, call animal control and your tax dollars will take care of a feral cat for you.

Not all are like that any more, though. So it depends on where the OP is located. Cook County animal control no longer picks up stray cats as there’s an active and coordinatedTNR program here (with local ordinances passed to accomodate), so they will help people get in contact with the organization designated to help in their area. If it’s a feral, there are even different ZIP codes targeted each year, in which the TNR in that area is free.

But at any rate, I will repeat, if a person were to show up with the cat at the local animal control, tell them he’s an asshole and she doesn’t want him any more, they will take him off her hands, just like any other unwanted pet. He will then be taken care of humanely. Its not rocket science.

I had a cat I had to do that with when my kids were babies. The cat didn’t like the kids. Because the cat was a mean bitch who went after the kids, I needed to get rid of her fast - no kill shelters had waiting lists to take the cat. It was a $20 donation at the Humane Society, but I’m sure the donation was optional. And my son still has the scar 16 years later.

A cat who is obviously feral won’t make it into the adoption space.

The other option is leaving them in my neighborhood where all of the same problems will occur. Their lives haven’t changed, but mine has improved (no more cat feces, no more screaming cats at night).

I’m not a troll.

I’ve considered drowning one nasty beast in my koi pond, but I’m not an animal killer, and its not their fault they’re such nasty, disgusting creatures, so I don’t seriously consider that it’s possible to have revenge against an animal. They simply have the same life where they won’t bother as many people.

Exactly. In the meantime he’ll get three squares and a roof over his head until he’s humanely euthanized, instead of being left in the desert to dehydrate/starve or be eaten - or to find another neighborhood to terrorize.

If he’s super lucky, and he finds a neighborhood, he could still get TNR’d and turn into a cool neighborhood dude once his hormones have gone and he chillaxes (and by then if he’s friendly he could even find a home). By the OP’s description, that’s really not a location where that’s possible. The fact that the cat hung out in a neighborhood and ate other cats’ food and invaded spaces, it sounds like he’s not a good hunter, so being left in an area where there are no leavings from people to scavenge, he’s SOL.

Surprised the OP didn’t put this in the Pit.

But seriously folks, getting the cat fixed costs money. Perhaps the OP had no money (though if he would buy 11,000 cans to find one his cats would eat, he had money). I suspect he just didn’t think broadly enough, such as asking people here or calling a vet. If the local rescue groups refuse to give him help and support, what should he do? Box up the cat and send it to you?

Reading the riot act to people who already know they done wrong, doesn’t help. Support and education does.

Carnut, there were plenty of supportive and educational replies to this thread.

over on my patch of this side of the mountains, the Humane Society is Animal Control (thus a quasi-governmental branch)

And they do routinely kill cats for space, and (rarely) refuse cats for space. The latter usually happens in unusual circumstances, such as when an animal horder has all the animals they’ve collected removed (often cats but not always) resulting in a huge influx. When trapping, do they provide traps for you where you are or do you have to get your own?