All excellent reasons for not having a cat; and lame excuses for not living up to your responsibilities once you’ve chosen to have one anyway.
I’d also suggest keeping Squeaker inside-she’ll be a lot safer that way.
Tuckerfan, check out Friends of Animals. They offer reduced-cost spay/neuter certificates which are usable at participating vets in your area. You can find such vets by entering your zip code on the right side of that page. You can get a female cat spayed for $65.
They’re a bit, errr, nutty about animal rights, but not as bad as PETA. Just so’s you know.
Bite me. When I got the cats, my work schedule was much more stable and it would have been easy to get Squeaker fixed had my work schedule stayed the same. Given that I’m a depressive having animals is good for my mental state. I didn’t intend to wind up with 3 cats (I was adopted by an abandoned cat [she was neutered prior to her showing up here]), but I’ve got 'em, and they want for little. They get food, affection, and a warm place to sleep (plus rabies vaccinations) which is more than they’d get if were wild, and given that Squeaker and her mother came from the pound, and that Fuzzy was an abandoned kitty, they probably wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for me (and I can say that the reverse might well be true as well).
Guin, I never wanted either of my cats to be outdoors seeing as how my last cat got killed by a pack of stray dogs. However, Heket quickly explained to me that she was going to be allowed outside, and Squeaker followed suit. And when I say “explained” I mean explained. Heket would climb on my lap and piss all over me (despite having a perfectly clean litter box) and shred the window blinds and drapes. Discipline with a squirt bottle didn’t solve the problem (though it corrected everything else). Given that I couldnt do anything to stop the behavior when I wasn’t home, I didn’t have much choice but to allow them out.
Talk to a vet about a payment plan of a few bucks per week.
Find a home for her.
Look, it is a lot easier to pay to fix one cat or to find a home for one cat, than it is to pay to fix half a dozen cats or find homes for half a dozen cats.
If you keep letting your cat outside without being surpervised, you will end up with half a dozen cats in fairly short order.
It is in your best interests to keep your cat inside, and clean up shit throughout your flat, until you can come up with the cash and time to have her fixed.
Such are the resonsibilities of pet ownership, or ownershit as the case may be.
BTW, when I was as broke as one can get, I took in a dying cat from my fire escape simply so that it could die in peace rather than under the hot sun. Well, it didn’t die, and a couple of nights later later it gave birth to five kittens in my hair. I know what it is like to have to have deal with cat shit and having my flat torn apart – hell, they even tore out the ceiling light fixture!
Obligatory kitty pics (coincidentially, the one on the left was named Squeaker): http://my.tbaytel.net/culpeper/kittensinhelmet25percent.jpg
How about I don’t tell you how to live your life, and you don’t tell me how to live mine?
Were any of my cats to exhibit symtoms of pain and suffering they’d be at a vet ASAP, regardless of how much money I might have. Squeaker, despite having a miscarriage is her usual, affection demanding, self. Whatever’s wrong with her doesn’t appear to be life threatening in the short term. Nor am I entirely certain that she’s the one who had the miscarriage. I had the window open last night and as I have posted here before, some of the neighborhood cats (male and female) have a tendancy to go scampering through the house at all hours when I do this. Squeaker is the prime suspect as she had a swollen abdomen a couple of weeks ago, but it disappeared some days ago, so I’m guessing that she’s the one, however, it could be others. (Since I have no idea of how many of them have been fixed, certainly none of the males seem to have been.)
And you simply have no idea of how bad the cat shit problem got when I kept Squeaker and Heket locked in the house. Pretty much most of the carpet’s ruined (which it wasn’t in great shape to begin with, so no big loss), but quite literally I’ve come home and the stench has been so bad with the place closed up that I could smell it before I opened the door. Plus, when I’m not around and Squeaker’s mad, she has the annoying habit of shitting in inconvient places (like tucked up in a corner behind the speaker that’s blocked by the chair). When I am around, she tends to shit on me. If she’s allowed to go out when she wants, she shits in the litterbox or outside, just fine. Odds are that it’ll be 3 weeks max before I can get her neutered. If she gets herself knocked up before then (and the vet refuses to neuter her because of it) than any kittens she has will wind up in the pound, where at least there’s a chance that they’ll find a good home.
How much could you save on your food budget if you took most of your meals from a shelter/soup kitchen, and otherwise cooked only beans and rice for yourself? Seriously. Unless you are already doing this, you have a way of saving enough to have your cat fixed. Just consider the effort you must put into cleaning between now and then as something to motivate you to do what it takes to save up and get your cat fixed.
Hey, I’m not the irresponsible pet owner. You are. Deal with it.
Stop posting about stepping on a cat fetus, stop wasting time on the internet, and use that time to get out there and find the money necessary to fix your cat. Work odd jobs in addition to your regular shift if you have to. Borrow from friends if you have to. Beg on the street if you have to. Just do it.
Don’t like others telling you how to live your life? Then start living responsibly with respect to your pets.
Or I could switch to eating cat food. That’s just as reasonable request.
I could also quit socializing with people one day a week, give up my internet connection, and sell blood. I’d also probably be dead in short order. Even with my meds, my sanity gets pretty frayed at times. I’m too isolated as it is, cutting myself off even more would, quite literally, be a death sentence for me.
It’s difficult for me to be motivated for me to even bathe when I stagger in at 3 AM after a night of work and I’m covered head to foot in racid machine oil adding having to rearrange the entire house to make sure that I’ve gotten all the cat shit is quite simply more than I can handle.
Muffin, if you’re so concerned about getting my cat fixed, then why don’t you give me the money? You do that today, and I can have the cat fixed tomorrow (if I get the money after that, it may have to wait, depending upon what my work schedule is).
I’d be concerned that there was more than two fetuses in there. If there are miscarried kittens in her uterus, that could get septic real quick. I hope that’s not the case, but it can happen.
I have US$41 (left over from a trip to the USA last summer). Email me your address tonight, and I will mail the cash to you tomorrow. culpeperlaw@tbaytel.net
Anyone else have some spare cash to ship Tuckerfan’s way forthwith? We know he needs it, and we know he is a decent fellow and a strong contributor to the SDMB. So how about it?
I found another US$66 in my change box. Now we’re up to US$107 in total. Needless to say, I won’t be skiing in Lutsen for their Mountain Meltdown as I had planned. Get your mail address (and real name to go along with it) to me tonight.
Cheers,
Richard Culpeper
culpeperlaw@tbaytel.net
If somebody sets up a paypal fund, I suppose I could spare a few bucks. Frankly though, I’m jealous. If I step on dog shit, can I get money too? 
I’m not gonna join in the “be a responsible cat owner!” pile-on, but just wanna point out that Googling things like “nashville tennessee low cost spay neuter” is turning up a bunch of interesting stuff. They don’t seem to have websites, but there are phone numbers.
Check your email. I thank you and Squeaker thanks you.
DDG, Nashville doesn’t work for me, and I work there. It’s a 45 minute drive for me (one way) and traffic’s a nightmare. I could get Squeaker to a place there, but getting her home from there is problemmatic. I’d have to get up early enough to be able to pick her up, drive back home, and then turn around and head into work. For some reason (and when I go to the doc to get my meds adjusted I’m going to talk to him about this as it’s a definate problem for me) I’m simply incapable of dragging my sorry ass out of bed unless I’ve had 8+ hours of sleep. This makes things really fun when I get home from work at 3 AM Saturday morning, and have to be back at work at 11 AM later that day. I usually stumble into work at the last possible second unwashed and wearing the same clothes I had on when I left work 8 hours before. I’m lucky that no one cares too much about what you actually do on Saturdays, just that you show up, so I can hide in a corner and suck down caffiene until I really wake up some hours later. If I had to try and function at the same level I do during the week, I’d wind up getting mangled pretty quickly. (And yes, I do speak from experience on this matter.)
I’ve received your addy. The cash will be in the mail tomorrow morning.
Muffin, you rock. Very nice of you.
Tuckerfan, most vets will allow you to drop off your cat in the morning and leave it overnight for a surgery (pick up the next day), if that helps at all with your schedule.
Indeed he does.
Yeah, that’s how I had to do it when I had Heket spayed.
You know, perhaps you should clean the litterbox more often?
Or find a new home for Squeaker. I’m sorry, but if you can’t afford to properly take care of her, you shouldn’t be a cat owner.
Chance they’ll find a good home? Yeah-do you know how many kittens they get a week-hell, a day, I would imagine.
I don’t feel sorry for you. If you can’t do a feel simple things to help your situation, when people offer you advice, make excuses and whine about it, then tough shit.