Waxwinged, I know a bit about what you face there, as I currently live in semi-rural TN and have spent many years in extremely out-there northern Maine. Where I live is becoming suburbs, but we are surrounded by surprisingly backwoods areas, and though the area is becoming more citified, old habits die hard. One of those old habits is taking in animals on a whim, and then spending as little money as possible on them, allowing them to fend for themselves for the most part. It’s incredibly frustrating and sad. I wish people who struggle to make ends meet for themselves and their kids would not add animals into the mix, but at the same time I can’t fault people for wanting an animal in their lives, and doing the best they can (from they way they were taught) to care for them.
I hope somebody can keep half an eye on those folks, and make sure the critters left are at least being fed and have shelter for the winter.
Waxwinged, thank you so much for what you do. I live in Japan (hiya flatlined! when you coming to visit, honey?) and am doing volunteer work with animals displaced after the earthquake and tsunami that hit us back in March.
Basically, animal shelters don’t exist here. I’d tell stories, but I end up on long crying jags, so I’ll spare you that.
Something I’ve noticed after the disaster here is that people get into OMG!CRISIS!!! mode, and can’t get out. So they spend more effort going and trying to rescue every single animal they find–admirable in itself–but spend less effort taking care of that animal once it’s been rescued. So you end up with traumatized cats basically living in cages for weeks, if not longer. No play time, no socialization time, no exercise. Some cats were feral, others were pets–but this situation does neither any favors. They’re warm and fed, but quality of life otherwise is pretty poor.
People start with the best of intentions, but things quickly spin out of control. If you have limited resources, like in your situation, sometimes it’s better to leave cats who can take care of themselves, and do what you can for those who can’t. It’s not an easy thing though, is it?
Anyway, I’m glad to hear your story and hang out with you and flatlined here. Take care.
It’s not just rural areas where animal control and animal shelters won’t help with cats and hoarders. My daughter was involved in a case where a relative living in a house had accumulated 20 some cats. They had been fed but not cared for, and the building was a disaster.
Animal control would not come unless one of the cats had bitten someone. My daughter and her husband captured many. They found that each shelter would only take 1,2, or 3 cats. They drove all over distributing cats to various shelters.
The remaining cats were picked up by animal control after my son-in law was bitten by one of the cats. A series of painful rabies shots were required.
This was in New York City. I would not have expected that city-run shelters would refuse cats.
No one was interested in taking action against the hoarder.
Sorry, but I’m curious about this statement. Do you mean that animal shelters don’t exist in Japan or that they don’t exist due to the earthquake and tsunami? I can’t imagine a rich, first world nation not having shelters for animals. What do they do with the strays?
Shelters don’t exist here, period. All we have is animal control, where animals are gassed after a short period. Strays? The official policy is “don’t feed them.” That’s it. One ward of Tokyo has actually made feeding stray cats subject to penalties.
After the tsunami, we went to visit a guy running a makeshift shelter–his people would sneak into the zone (the area around the nuclear power plant, where the government forcibly kept residents out), rescue stray dogs, and treat/feed them, post pics online for owners to see, etc. He would only allow us to visit on the condition that we tell not make his location public. Why? I asked. Because people will fucking load up their animals and dump them here, he replied.
Strays are routinely dumped. My cats were discovered in a cardboard box left in front of a convenience store some 3 years ago. Traditionally, litters of kittens are often left at temples/outside of vets’ offices/dumped in the river/passed along to research centers.
Hmm, never knew that about Japan. That’s kind of messed up, considering their reverence of Hello Kitty and tentacle porn. I guess if she didn’t have a job as a mascot they’d gas her too
I’m having to type with kittens on hands, please forgive my bad coding.
Thank you for the update. Sick feral cats don’t live long, but they do breed. The heartbreaking thing is that the poor kittens will suffer before they die. I have hand caught feral kittens in the past. Their eyes were swollen and covered with gunk, eyelids half way sealed closed. 3 or 4 months old and they couldn’t run away from me because they were so sick. Its heartbreaking.
If you had more traps/money, could your group manage to have them euthed? From what you have said, vets are probably also in short supply.
Sick cats are not very good hunters. My colony is healthy and fixed and well fed. I often see Steve (the alpha cat) hanging out about a half a mile away when I drive home. Steve manages to get to the feeding station at dinner time, it takes him less than half an hour to get there. Sick cats can’t cover that much territory.
You are trying. You are doing your best. We have to do triage. It sucks. We aren’t just rescuing one cat at a time, we are doing the best we can for all of them and sometimes we just have to make heartbreaking choices.
Thank you. Offers you a sloppy biker hug for your efforts and the hurt in your heart.
Moral of the story: Animal hoarders suck. Adopt an adult nondescript tabby kitty today!
[/QUOTE]
I totally agree with you here.
word. I so want to bitch slap people who call us and say that they got a kitten from a parking lot for their kids and now have kittens and kittens and more kittens because they couldn’t afford 30 bucks to have their female fixed. The people who say they did it so their kids would be able to “witness the miracle of birth” have a special place in hell in my mind.
Please tell your daughter thank you for me. I know how bad that was. I know how hard that was. There is nothing worse than finding the collector’s house by smelling it from the road.
Once of the places we cleaned out had cats in the walls. They had peed and clawed up the drywall so much that they made holes and climbed into the walls and peed. They also peed on the bed that the woman was sleeping in.
I’m pretty good with pee. I can tell the difference from the smell if its human, cat, dog or equine poop and pee just from the stench. I’ve been involved in rescue over 12 years. (OMG, I’m getting so old). When I walked into that house, I puked into my carrier. I don’t know why I bothered to use the carrier because nobody would have noticed the mess on the layer of cat poop and puke.
The woman who owned the house moved out and bought another house. Which she filled with cats. The house we cleaned out was torn down because it couldn’t be fixed. I’ve drove by the new house, its is very pretty from the outside, this woman has lots of money. I could smell the cat pee with my windows rolled up.
The only reason Law Enforcement gets involved with hoarders here is because us rescue people get noisy. It really ticks us off that the neighbors don’t complain because “they don’t want to get involved”.
Kinki, this post is getting tldr, so I’m going to not quote you and just say that I understand your tears.
Waxwinged, I second everything Kinki said. Thank you so much.