Every Rat Bastard Who Doesn't Spay Or Neuter Your Cats

The BBQ Pit
41

LHofD
My guess is that he’s a purebred and I’ll check to see if there is a rescue group in the area.

First I’m going to try the politeness bit since I would rather not go to war with the next door neighbor. She’s a single mom with two teenage kids and I like to think that she’s just overwhelmed with her own issues. I still have a low tolerance for people who neglect an animal so I’m going to have to keep my attitude in check when speaking with her.

and also, [hijack] I’m going to lay off of lighting your fuse for a while. A guy who cares about animals like you do can’t be all bad. [/hijack]

Thanks for the encouragement,
Bubba

42

Thanks.

Definitely I’d recommend the carrot-approach first; I ended up changing the order of my two ideas in the middle of the post for organizational reasons, and only realized it sounded like, “Squeal first, negotiate later” after I’d submitted the post. If you call AC before talking to them, that talk ain’t gonna go so well, obviously :). Also, although I hinted at it in my previous post, nothing you described sounds like it’d be illegal in my area; although the laws may be better where you live, most animal welfare laws only deal with physical health issues, not with an animal’s psychological needs.

Malthus, your situation is a little different. If the cat is happy having you take care of it, maybe that’s the best alternative. You may want to check your local laws about animal care: I know ours require an owner to provide an animal with adequate shelter, and leaving the cat out all night is unlikely to qualify as meeting this requirement. If you want to pursue this, you could do worse than keeping a log of when you see the cat outside. If the cat is obviously underfed, take some pictures of the cat. A call to animal control might not elicit much response, but unless your AC department is woefully incompetent, it should at least garner a record in their system, establishing your history of concern for this cat.

You may also want to check whether the cat is wearing rabies tags, and whether that’s required in your jurisdiction. Also check whether animals are allowed to roam free: in our area, although it’s almost never enforced (since nobody calls about it), it’s illegal for a cat to be off the owner’s property unless properly controlled, either on a leash (seriously) or in a crate or other container. If so, you may consider renting a carrying case from your shelter; next time the cat comes in, you can take it to the shelter and let them know both who the owner is and where you found it. (Photograph the cat on your doorstep first).

DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU CAN ADOPT THE CAT IF THE OWNERS DON’T COME BY TO PICK IT UP! At our shelter, if someone brings us a stray (which this cat technically is) and they tell us they want to adopt the animal if the owner doesn’t come by, we’ll hold the animal for an extra 24 hours to give the person a chance to come adopt the animal. Find out if your shelter will do the same.

Wanna be sneaky about it? I’m not going to give you any illegal advice, but I will say that veterinary records help to establish ownership of an animal, and veterinarians are mostly used to people bringing in strays that they’re thinking about adopting. Be aware that if you lie to the veterinarian about ownership, there could be mass trouble for you AND for the veterinarian; if you decide to take the animal to the vet, be careful to tell the strict truth.

I’m all about helping animals out; often, if you learn the law, you can use it as a stick to match the carrot of offering aid. “Let me help,” you can say. “Otherwise,” you mutter under your breath, “I’ll hound you.”

Daniel

43

There are probably a lot of ways to do this, but one way would be to keep the status quo, but gradually, every so gradually, keep the cat with you more and more. Eventually, the cat will be more yours by default.

Something like this happened to my family years ago. Neighbor lady got a cute white kitten for her kids, who only visited on weekends. Weekdays, the kitten was left outside almost all of the time. When the kids visited on weekends, the kitten had bruises from the rough handling from the kids.

The neighbor mom seemed more clueless than anything else. She didn’t want to give away the kitty, but didn’t really give a shit about it either.

Slowly but surely, our family started keeping the kitty at our house. He’d stay overnight, we fed him, etc.etc. However, whenver we let him outside, he’d go over to the neighbor lady. She’d keep him in for a few hours, then dump him outside for the night. And then he’d come over to us again.

Finally we got sick of this and just kept the cat in for days and days and days. The lady didn’t ask about him. She didn’t, I suspect, notice that he was missing. The kids noticed, and asked my mom about the kitty. My mom pointedly told the kids, “We have a nice white kitty now, but he is our cat. Kitties go where they are treated well and fed, you know.”

The kids knew what this meant, and they never asked for “their” cat again.

Now, I don’t know how well this would work in your situation. It seems to me that these particular neighbors are pricks who don’t really want the cat, but don’t want anyone else to have it either. One possible tactic might be to simply keep the cat more and more, keep it inside, and if asked, claim that you don’t have anyone else’s cat in your home. (Because, after all, a cat does not really “belong” to someone who won’t take care of it and doesn’t give a shit about it.)

But—hmmm…don’t know how well that would work in your case.

44

Thanks for the advise, all.

LHofD, those tactics are unlikely to work well, for a couple of reasons; first, our own cat is an outdoor cat, and so they could retaliate in kind; and second, since we have already been feeding him for a while, he now looks sleek and happy and so pics of him thin and pathetic can’t be had. Plus, if at all possible, I would like to resolve it amicably [while recognizing that the well-being of the cat is ultimately more important].

Yosimitebabe, what you suggest is sort of what is happening by default. :wink:

I was moved by this thread to call my wife, who is at home right now. By bizzare coincidence, she was thinking about the very same thing - because it is bitterly cold today, and their cat was out (I think it is something like - 30 with windchill in Toronto). The landlords called my wife, saying that the cat was out and looking weak. Of course, she rushed to let it in, and it is, right now, in our house playing happily with our cat.

Well, this is kinda the last straw. My wife said she is going to have some words with the neighbour about adoption. Letting a cat out [read: tossing him out] in -30 is abusive, possibly deadly.

45

Here’s info on the San Mateo law from the Peninsula Humane Society

Note the permit fee is only $25, plus the liscence differential. Still, people don’t pay it.

Some data about it’s effectivness. According to this site, the euthanasia rate for cats went UP 127% after the law was passed, reversing a previous decline. I’ve also seen the figure quoted as an 87% increase, depending on the numbers used.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I think of that. I think it’s an inevitable result of that sort of law, and you half to ask yourself would you rather this animal un-fixed and home or put to sleep at the shelter? Most of us would say ‘at home, of course’, but if you really consider it, put to sleep is probably for the greater good. I feel like that’s the position most shelters have taken. They have to make overpopulation thier priority, and sometimes that means things get worse for a little while.

I had a conversation with my vet a while back about early spay & neuter (kittens prior to 16 weeks). Shelters & rescue orgs will tell you it makes absolutly no difference. So i asked him if he thought it was a good idea, and he replied that he didn’t think it was bad idea, but in an ideal situation he’d rather wait. For a number of reasons it is better for the cat. If I responsible client of his, like me, got a new kitten, he would recommend waiting until 16 weeks for a male, slightly longer (but pre-heat) for a female. However, being fixed at 8 weeks is infinitely better than remaining unaltered for life.

This is the sort of situation the shelters are in. One kitten I fostered was neutered by the shelter at 6 weeks, 1 1/2 lbs, and possesing of a raging URI. He will always be small, and the color on his points (siamese) stopped coming in. However, he was pulled from a feral colony. So the choices were: re-release him with his mom unneutered (illegal), adopt him out unneutered (illegal*), or put him down, as they had no cage space for him to hang out in until he was old enough/big enough. In line with their goals of having less kittens this year than last year, they did the best thing they could.

*They counted entering into foster care as an adoption-- which meant that any kitten too small to be weaned/fixed or mother still nursing was unilaterally put down. They have relaxed this requirement a slightly, but for a while there several rescue orgs had a kitten smuggling opperation. We’ve reached the point where they will direct people looking to surrender kittens to us, so they they aren’t logged in officially.

46

Malthus, I’d go with other posters’ suggestions to go on as you are, feeding the cat and letting him in whenever he comes to your house. Don’t say a word to the neighbors, just let the cat decide who he wants to be with. My gut feeling is they don’t give a damn about him and are just dog-in-the-manger types. Since, as you point out, they don’t seem to have even noticed what’s happening, you could wind up with him by default.

Of course, I’m a person who helped a friend steal a neglected Lhasa Apso from its oblivious owners, so… :wink:

Do they ever take the cat to the vet? Was he neutered by the previous neighbor who abandoned him?

47

Now that my wife has her dander up, it’s out of my hands - words will be said whether I want it or not.

Actually, it was of vets I was thinking. I really, really want to take him to the vet for a check-up; I don’t think they ever have. That is one of the reasons why I want to formally adopt - I have no idea of how a vet would react to some song-and-dance on my part, if I bring him in and I am not the owner.

He was neutered by previous owners.

48

That sort of thing happened to my sister’s family as well. Their two labs treed a cat who subsequently hung around after the dogs had been penned up. Turns out the cat had come from the family across the street; they had five or six other cats and didn’t notice one was missing. Once my sister informed her neighbors she had one of their cats they apparently didn’t raise a fuss to get it back.

49

Hee hee hee, I almost posted a rant a couple of days ago about the idiot ex-dog owners we encountered. Left the dog locked outside in sub-freezing temps all day and all night, frozen water bowl, left over the weekend with no food, etc.

We stole him. Nabbed, grabbed, and fled the scene.

Funny thing is we (the wife and I) are real decent folk whose moral compasses are working fine. We don’t steal (or hadn’t before this), don’t cheat on our taxes, we both work in professions where trust is paramount, we’re honest and ethical, we’re good neighbors, obey traffic laws, and have pleasant demeanors. (Really. If you don’t believe me just ask me.)

But we just up and stole their dog last week. They are neighbors of friends, so we visit occasionally (this is how we know the dog’s history) but don’t live nearby. My wife once said something to the neighbor about the dog’s lack of water. Neighbor: “Nah… he’s fine.”

The day after the pooch-napping (neighbor failed to notice the lack of dog for 24 hours) the neighbor asks our friend if she thought my wife had called animal control on her. Not “My precious baby is missing, have you seen him? I’m so distraught!” but rather “Do you think I might be in trouble for the way I treated my dog?”

So… we gave him a new name to symbolize his new life with us, gave him a bath and clipped out the matted hair, and cleaned the encrusted feces off his ass. When we got him home he spent several minutes drinking from the water bowl, I don’t know how long it’d been since he had a drink. His ribs show, but we can cure that (don’t worry, won’t let him get fat). He’s due at the vet tomorrow for a round of shots and a neutering (sorry little buddy, but it’s got to be done).

He’s a real sweet dog, and is getting along with the rabbit, cats, and iguanas (all strays and/or rescues). And no, we are not weird, we just like animals.

50

Our kitty got spayed at the same time she had her leg removed (approximately 8 weeks, though because of the circumstances under which she came to the shelter, nobody knows for sure). Both the shelter and the vet told us that as long as the cat is a certain weight, it’s OK. She’s growing normally and is already bigger than two of our neighbors’ cats (who are small, but still). We had to take her to the vet today (what we thought was a hairball wasn’t, and she has a fever, sore throat, and respiratory infection) and despite having not eaten in a day and a half (and despite missing a leg), she’s 7.1 pounds (she was 3 lbs when we adopted her at 3 months. She’s 8 months now). The shelter where we adopted Petra does not adopt unaltered animals out - they don’t adopt them at all until they’re of a weight to be neutered/spayed and alter every animal that comes in their doors if it needs to be done.

It’s a good shelter. If I had money, I’d donate it.

51

Obsidian, thanks for that link. The San Mateo program does look fairly different from ours. Most importantly, our animal control department is champing at the bit to enforce this ordinance: whenever they find a person in violation of other animal control ordinances, they’ll issue a fine for lack of unaltered animal permit (unless, of course, the owner has a permit or the animals are altered). We could end up issuing a dozen or two such citations every month. Owners can have the citations waived by having their animals spayed or neutered, at a cost ranging from $0 (if they receive food stamps or Medicaid) to $27.50.

Carrot and stick. I can’t say for sure that we’ll have no permits issued, and I can’t say for sure that we’ll see a decrease in euthanasia rates, but there’s no reason for us to see increased owner surrenders due to the ordinance: once a person is cited, the only way they can avoid the citation is to have their animal altered. Surrendering it to the shelter won’t get us to waive the citation.

One last note: the statistical analysis you linked to is on a Cat Fanciers website. In other words, it’s an analysis of the ordinance by people who breed cats either professionally or as a hobby. They may not be providing the most unbiased view of the ordinance: there may be important statistics they’re leaving off because such statistics wouldn’t be favorable to them. Where, for example, are statistics on the number of spay/neuter surgeries in San Mateo County after this ordinance passed? That would be one of the most important indicators of its success, I’d think, second only to number of animals surrendered to the shelter. And has the situation changed at all since 1994, the last year covered by this study?

Daniel

52

And Malthus and Jimmy, I would still suggest documenting as much as you can if you’re going to do this: if things ever become ugly, you’ll want some hard evidence of your neighbor’s mistreatment of their animals. Even if that means taking a picture of the cat with a timestamp camera when it’s outdoors, and paperclipping it to a printout of the day’s weather report, at least that’s something.

Otherwise, if your neighbor decides to bring in law enforcement, it’ll become a he-said she-said situation, and the law is likely to favor your neighbor.

Daniel

53

Yes, Left, I know. Believe me, I’m actually feeling a moral conflict for what we did. I’m not sorry for the people we got him from and I’m not sorry for the dog, but I am sorry I blatantly outright stole something. And if the law gets involved I know we haven’t a leg to stand on. That’s just the way it is.

I wouldn’t recommend this course of action to everybody, heck I won’t recommend this course of action to anybody. For the one we got there’re probably a hundred more down at the shelter. We didn’t really set out to have a dog, which is why we didn’t just go to the shelter. But this one was just too sad, which motivated us to do something we wouldn’t ordinarily do.

(Note to self - stealing is wrong. Cut it out.)

54

I hope I’m not coming across as judging or condeming what you did – that’s not at all my intention. I’m just saying that you might be able to cover your ass a little if you can show why you took the animals in. This ain’t legal advice, but there’s some chance that if the sheriff’s department comes out to resolve a complaint like this, and they see pictures of a starving dog outside in winter conditions without ice, they’ll put some sheriffy pressure on the dog’s previous owner to drop the issue. In my experience, law enforcement loves good documentation.

Daniel

55

The neighbor kids brought me this really scrawny kitten with brown fur, oriental build and green eyes. I fell in love of course. I am not sure how old Cocoa was when she came to me, but maybe seven or eight weeks. It could be alot older because she was starving. The other real mystery (to me anyway) was what the heck what probably could only be a pure bred havana brown (not my cat but looks like my cat exactly) was doing starving to death on the near south side of Milwaukee. This is a working poor and poor section of town. No senario I can come up with makes any sense.

Anyway that was almost 12 years ago. She is still kind of an indoor-outdoor cat, but mostly now prefers mostly prefers inside these days. She is alergic to flees and alot of different cat foods. The current food seems to be working for now. When she goes I am kind of torn. I would rather rescue cats but this one has been such a wonderful cat that I would be pretty tempted to go find a breeder.

We are sort of a his hers and theirs household. I came with a kid and a cat (Cocoa) he came with two cats ( both rescues) and we addopted a dog from the pound together. The dog is part lab, part who knows, and was theoreticaly a year and a half old but is now getting awfuly grey about the muzzle for a 4 to 5 year old dog.

56

I think this is the key. Our ordinance has no real law enforcement behind. You simply cannot posses an unaltered animal without the permit. So if someoen get’s caught, they just surrender the animal. Making it more like a ‘fix-it’ traffic ticket would go a long way to motivating people to actually fix their animal.

I also didn’t realize where the study came from, that’s an interesting point. This article from the national animal interest alliance lists the rate of increase as 86%, for areas affected by the law, which is not the whole county. However, there is no data past 1994 (that I can find). Whether this original surge was reversed, I don’t know. Considering the waiting list for low-cost altering at the two local shelters is 6 weeks or more long, I do think that the rate of altering has gone up. Or maybe they’re just understaffed.

The problem with these sort of laws (at least around here) is that they totally ignore the problem of feral/stray cats-- which are, from my anecdotal experience in the rescue/shelter industry, the largest contributer to the cat overpopulation problem. For every one litter of kittens that some person’s cat has ‘by accident’, we get ten litters fished out of colonies down at the waterfront of up in the hills, and this is with the aggressive TTNVR programs that we implement. It doesn’t freeze here, and it doesn’t get unbearably hot. Food and water are plentiful and kitten season is long. You could fix every single housepet from Portland to LA, and we’d still be swamped from early March to late October. Do you have a serious feral problem where you are, or is the simply a product of the climate here?

57

Obsidian, a few points:

  • I’m enjoying this discussion; it’s very interesting seeing San Mateo’s experience, and I’ll pass this on to the Director of Animal Control at our next staff meeting.
  • NAIA is a consortium of circus owners, furriers, ranchers, rodeo operators, and similar organizations – including, most significantly, breeders. They refer to the Humane Society of the United States as “extremists”, and are not at the top of my list of objective organizations. Check out their list of friends and affiliates to see what I’m talking about; it gives the least-spinned impression of their perspective of anywhere I can see on their website. You’ve got me interested, and I’m going to see what I can find out statwise from sources less hostile to mandatory spay/neuter laws.
  • We do have a feral animal problem here, and I just ran some of the relevant stats earlier this week, so they’re at my fingertips. On an average day, we receive about 6-7 stray dogs and about 5 stray cats. These may be owned animals that have gotten loose or feral animals; because we cannot determine with certainty whether a stray animal is owned, I can’t give you more specific stats than these. Of the 11-12 strays we receive every day, 1-2 will be returned to their owner.
  • However, we receive slightly more owner-surrender animals on an average day than stray animals. Each day we receive about 6 owner-surrender dogs and 6-7 owner-surrender cats. A huge number of these (I didn’t run this stat, but I’ve run it before, and it comes out to around 50%, maybe more) are younger than 6 months.

The mandatory spay/neuter law will help with both owner-surrenders and with strays. It’s obvious how it should change owner-surrender numbers: people will hear about the ordinance and get their animals altered, and then they’ll not be bringing the animals to the shelter. (Between the first and second bullet point of this post I gave another woman directions to the shelter where she can pick up vouchers for a mother cat and three kittens). A local group whose focus is solely on public education has arranged for commercials on local television about the ordinance and the importance of altering animals.

It’ll help decrease strays, however, in less obvious ways. First off, far too many animals in our semi-rural county are just abandoned: people are always bringing by animals that were dropped off at the end of their mountain road. These animals don’t start off feral, but they end up that way. If we can get the owned animals altered, that’ll help us with decrease numbers of unowned unaltered animals. Second, a stray animal that ends up at the shelter is almost automatically in violation of the animal control ordinance, inasmuch as it was off its owner’s property; when people come to reclaim their animals, we’ll have the option in many cases of citing them with possessing an animal at large and then citing them in addition with failing to alter their animal. Again, we can waive the unaltered-animal citation if they have their animal altered, and we’ll even give them a voucher to cover part or all of that cost. Carrot and stick :).

Finally, altered animals are less likely to roam, and therefore less likely to show up at the shelter as strays.

Daniel

58

Hmm – I just noticed something interesting. The NAIA and Cat Fanciers information on San Mateo doesn’t go past 1994; however, the Peninsula Humane Society Website describes the relevant laws as going into effect in 1996. What gives?

No luck so far on finding a good statistical analysis, although I ran across a hint that King County, WA’s spay/neuter laws had been tremendously successful; I’ll see what I can find out.

Daniel

59

Sorry about the multiple posts, but I’ll put this up, and then I’m gone:

King County put into effect an unaltered animal permit law and saw great results. (Turns out we’re not nearly so unique as I thought; that’ll teach me to take office rumors at face value!) They saw a 52% reduction in euthanasia rates after the ordinance went into effect.

Granted, there was clearly something else at work, too: they also saw a 65% increase in adoptions, accounting for some (but not nearly all) of the decreases in euthanasia. They’re seeing about 30% fewer animals coming in, which definitely helps.

However, the adoption rate’s increase points to a general surge in public trust in the shelter – and generally such surges are coupled with an increase in the number of surrendered animals. (We’re looking at building a new shelter and anticipate seeing, all things equal, a 33-50% increase in animal intakes as a result). If I’m right, if people felt more comfortable bringing animals to the shelter, then the 30% reduction in animal intake is very significant.

Okay, now I’m off for the weekend.
Daniel

60

The law was originally passed by the county, and it then only applied to the unincorporated parts of the county. They then had to campaign to get the cites to pick it up, and only two did (San Mateo and Belmont). My guess is, it was 96 before it was implemented in those cities.

I wish you good luck with your new shelter (and your new law). You guys sound like a good operation. There are a lot of shelters around here (Sacramento and environs are some of the worst) that are so over-run and underfunded that you are literally better dumping your pet on the street.