Please tell me how that can be! Is your viewpoint that it’s better to kill breathing kittens rather than pre-born? Do you believe that there are not enough kittens being killed in the humane societies? Not enough unwanted kittens roaming, sick and starving on the streets? Are you thinking it’s NOT completely irresponsible to allow your pet to become pregnant?
No one loves kittens and cats more than I do (ask anyone who knows me). My husband and I volunteer to care for a colony of feral cats here. We help catch, spay/neuter and release them back to their colony to control the population, and we feed them on a regular basis. We got our cat from the area, but she was NOT feral. She was apparently dropped off near the colony because the irresponsible owner let her get pregnant and figured cats can take care of themselves. Guess what. THEY CAN’T! This kitty was ridiculously skinny, filthy and starving for attention. She’s fat, happy and spoiled rotten now - AND NO KITTENS will be had, ever. There’s. just. too. many. of. them!
So, yes, please explain to me how your viewpoint can be SOOOOO different from mine. I really want to know.
It comes down to my beliefs about animals in general, and their “suffering” in relation to human suffering, and all sorts of Great Debate material that doesn’t belong here.
Even if you eliminate the whole “suffering” aspect, towns across the nation spend a significant amount of money to deal with animal control issues. Feral cats, unending litters of kittens being dropped off at the shelter, the need to at least make the attempt to place these animals before destroying them, the cost of housing and feeding and medical care, then the cost of euthanizing and disposing of them. Every time a cat owner fails to get their pets fixed, they either put more animals into the system, or prevent a new owner from taking a pet out of the system.
Ultimately, these are domesticated animals, breeding and population control are OUR responsibility, and way too many people do not take responsibility for the animals they own.
Space, time and money. All of which their is precious little of in shelters and rescues across the US.
Why should we house and feed a pregnant mom for 4 weeks just to euth her kittens when she has them? We can spay her upon arrival while pregnant and then have her ready for adoption in the time we were waiting for her to have her kittens. Once she is adopted, it opens up a space for another cat awaiting adoption.
Well, during the struggle against ignorance, we’ve been visited by Holocaust deniers, creationists, and people who believe the moon landing was faked. I suppose it’s par for the course we’d get someone who puts quotes around animal “suffering” because of a belief system.
Wow. I’m sure I’m not the only person who believes there’s a fundamental difference between humans and all other animals, but hey, if that makes me an ignoramus, so be it.
There is a fundamental difference between humans and animals. Humans can choose when to use birth control and have some control over reproduction. We also domesticated cats and dogs, so we now are their guardians. As their guardians, we must protect them from their reproductive tendencies to over-populate.
Bottom line, Kricket: You can redeem yourself here by getting your cat fixed pronto and telling your friends who are willing to adopt one of your cat’s irresponsibly-produced kittens to go down to the humane society and save some lives that already exist.
Anything else is simply willful ignorance and complete uncaring on your part.
Suffering is suffering. You don’t think animals can suffer? You don’t think they feel hunger, feel pain, get cold, get too hot? Just because animals aren’t people doesn’t mean I think they should suffer - I believe in reducing suffering, period.
I wouldn’t use the word ignoramus (what are you ignorant of exactly?) - but you’re right, your viewpoint is radically different from mine.
Remember, I have no direct knowledge that you suffer. :et’s postulate that you are being tortured: I can observe your behavior and listen to the sounds you emit and extrapolate from my own experience of suffering, but maybe you’re just responding to stimulus and not actually suffering.
Also, my own capacity for suffering, which I know to be great, didn’t spring into existence out of whole cloth – it was passed to me (like everything else that I am) from ancestors (and ancestral species) from which I evolved. Clearly they had some capacity to suffer, or else the capacity to suffer is some magical construct that doesn’t obey all the other laws that made us what we are. The principle of parsimony argues for the first of those two possibilities.
In short: the appearance of suffering in animals means they are actually suffering, to the same degree that I can be sure anyone outside my own skull suffers.
Now it’s true that the thought of animal suffering bothers people – bothers them enough to make up all kinds of elaborate worldviews (from Skinnerian behaviorists’ insistence that animals are automatons to certain religions’ views that “God gave us dominoon over them”) in which they don’t have to feel guilty. That’s natural…natural enough to be easily recognized for what it is.
Hell, some cats don’t even get an attempt. When I was working at an emergency vet clinic a couple years ago, we’d take in ‘ferals’ that people would find. Sometimes they’d be injured, sometimes not. Since we were cooperating with the county shelters, we had to ask what county the cat was found in. There was a certain one that didn’t have the facilities to accept cats so any stray that was dropped off, injured or healthy, was an immediate euthanize. It got to the point where I would tell people who were bringing in healthy ‘nuisance’ strays to please PLEASE lie and say they got it from another county when filling out the form. It was horrible to have to put down a perfectly healthy and definitely not feral cat just because of where it was found.
You know, there’d be fewer homeless kittens if there weren’t so many barriers to adoption.
I’ve seen places/people that required:
(not necessarily all at the same place)
a large “rehoming fee” for supposedly free kittens
a credit check
a criminal background check
a copy of one’s lease that specifically gives permission for pets
proof that you have “a relationship” with a veterinarian (even though you don’t have any pets yet)
a home inspection visit.
I’ve even seen one person who wouldn’t give a cat to a single person who lives alone. Apparently cats need someone to stay home all day and take care of them.
The rehoming fee is usually slightly less than the regular cost of a spay/neuter, and includes free spay or neuter at a reputable vets. The aim of that rehoming fee is to keep more unwanted pets off the streets.
If you can’t afford to spay or neuter your pet, you can’t afford to have one, it’s as simple as that, and totally fair imo.
And the lease thing is to make sure people who aren’t allowed to have pets don’t go and ignore the rules of the lease only to bring the cat/dog back to the shelter in a month or so when the landlord finds out.
The shelter I found my cat at called the property manager to make sure I was allowed to have a cat. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have to provide proof that pets are okay by the people that actually own the place.
I am at a loss as to how you are supposed to have a relationship with a vet when you haven’t got an animal yet, beyond “Yeah, I know where the clinic is and I will take said critter there.”
At my local Humane Society, it’s definitely cheaper to pay the adoption fee, which includes vaccinations, flea and tick treatment, and the spay/neuter. The HS will also check the critter for things like FIV, FLeuk, and heartworms. My daughter took in a feral orphaned kitten (his mother died, and her aunt lived out in the country and wasn’t about to take in an orphan kitten), and it cost a bundle to get that little scrap of fur vaccinated and neutered and everything else.
Pets are not free, and need to have some money allowed to them in the budget. Mostly our cats need food and cat litter, with the annual trip to the vet for a checkup. It doesn’t cost much to keep them, but we DO have to allocate some money for their care.
A pregnant cat will cost more, as she really needs to be eating kitten food. The kittens themselves will also incur some expense, in food and in cleaning supplies, and that’s if they’re healthy.
In doing our end of year budgets, we had our treasurer analyze average costs per animal for our facility.
On average, we spent $170 per animal that comes through. Our adoption fees are $100 for a cat, $125 for an adult dog and $175 for a dog under 6 months of age. We aren’t making money on adoption fees, we aren’t even breaking even with them. We rely on donations to make up for the loss we take on the adoption fees.
Our adoption application will exclude some potentially good homes, but it definitely weeds out the homes we don’t want our animals going to. A vet reference is gold if you are a prior owner and they never hesitate to give us the skinny on how well or not well you took care of your past pets. If you have never owned a pet, we cut you some slack but ask that you form a relationship with a vet within two weeks of adoption. A number of our first time adopters are young people with their first place of their own, we don’t penalize for that.