I hate wandering cats and sometimes wish I had a crueler heart so I could just shoot them on sight. I pretty much think you don’t really love your cats if you let them wander outside, what with all of the animals that will and do make a meal out of them, and the cars, and all of the other dangers. I also think you are a very shitty neighbor, letting your cat piss all over MY flowers and sleep in MY garden because YOU can’t be arsed to properly take care of your cat.
Indoor cats live many years more, don’t you know that?
I am against outdoor cats on principle, but this aggressive trapping of neighbor cats sounds like an overreaction.
We have a cat who very desperately wants to go outside. We have successfully kept him inside for years. It’s not THAT hard.
You can’t be misunderstanding this. The fundamental issue with outdoor cats is killing wildlife (especially but not exclusively native wildlife). Every discussion about outdoor cats is either partly or entirely about their impact on wild birds.
Wait…you do realize that there are wild birds roaming around outside, right? Or are you proposing trapping and caging every single bird in the world? (I think, beyond the obvious impracticality, this is a terrible idea).
Wait…you do know that not all allergies are like bee-stings and peanut allergies where if you touch one molecule of the substance, you’ll instantly die, right? He’ll probably get a bit of cat fur on him in the 3 minutes it takes him to pick up the cage and walk to his neighbor’s house which (for most people) might result in slightly watery eyes or sniffles.
SSG Schwartz: I think trapping them is a remarkably humane way to deal with them (I assume you don’t leave the traps out if you’re out of town for weeks or something). I wouldn’t have thought of that idea. What kind of traps do you use? Like the kind they sell for raccoons?
It could be like my area. The town I live in has no “animal control”. If I take an animal to a neighboring community shelter, I have lower priority than a resident of the community.
I am a cat owner. I love cats, I volunteer at a rescue, etc.
I don’t have a problem at all with what the OP is doing. It’s his yard and he is free to set up traps in it. My cats are indoor only and don’t really want to go outside.
Feral cats are a big problem in some communities and colony management is more than just feeding cats. A friend of mine owns a business in an industrial park with a colony that lives there. She reduced the numbers of that colony from 75+ to 10 or so in the last couple of years by herself. She knows all members by sight, so if a new one shows up, she traps it, tests it, gets it vaccinated and fixes it. She has trapped new members only to find they aren’t feral, but dumped house-cats. These get put up for adoption. I know she initially asked the other business owners for $$ to help, but most of the money is coming out of her own pocket. The lifespan of a feral is pretty short, so the theory is that the colony will die off or become pretty small if it is well managed. The owner of the industrial park was prepared to have them all trapped and killed, but she convinced him she could control the population without doing that.
Ours sometimes manages to get past us. But then we chase her, call her, and watch her until we manage to catch her and bring her in. Even with kids it isn’t “oops, the cat got out, oh, we’ll, guess she will come back when she’s shit in the neighbors flowerbed and killed a songbird or two.”
Mine isn’t properly vaccinated because she is prone to vaccine related sarcoma. So outside is particularly bad for her. I think I managed to make my mother in law angry with me (again) because she has an indoor/outdoor cat and when I said ours can’t go out in part specifically for this reason, she said hers doesn’t tolerate vaccinations well either and therefore doesn’t get them (got ill after vaccination) and while I didn’t say anything, I don’t think I kept shock and disapproval off my face.
I love all animals and want nothing but happy, healthy lives for them (seriously, I have actively volunteered for many a shelter and animal rights organization), but man, I fucking can’t stand that people let their cats roam around the neighborhood.
My neighbors’ cats are constantly shitting in my flower beds, killing birds and leaving their decaying corpses all around my walkways, mewing loudly, tearing up my rose bushes (cat: YAY! FLOWERS! BAT BATBAT BAT BAT), clawing at my screens, and taunting my dogs by making base camp on my patios.
This irritates me for any number of reasons, but mainly one big one: I once got written up by the HOA for walking my dog from my car to my front door without a leash on. This is, maybe, 10 yards, all on my property and the dog walked right by my side calmly. Yet the neighbors can let their felines roam the neighborhood, causing destruction and being general assholes without much concern. Nonsense.
I have two cats. One is indoor/outdoor. He rarely leaves my yard and when he does it’s to sleep in the neighbor’s azalea bushes. The neighbor doesn’t mind (I asked). He’s a former stray who wasn’t happy being forced to always stay indoors. But, he’s old now and doesn’t kill birds and stuff or cause any issues with the neighbors. If my neighbor had objected to having the cat over, I would keep him inside I guess. Mostly I’m just glad my neighbor is friendly about it.
My other cat is very fat and declawed and she is only allowed in our courtyard or backyard, which are fully enclosed so she can’t escape. This is for her safety. So, yes, I can (and do) keep at least one cat in my yard, but it takes a huge wooden fence and a good bit of diligence. She really likes laying on the deck and sunning herself though, so it’s worth it.
Yep. With help from an awesome volunteer I literally just trapped a mom and five feral kittens out of the decaying well house in my backyard - got the last one yesterday morning. Don’t know what it is in the air, but after a lifetime of never having feral kittens be an issue in my life I’ve run into four litters and fifteen kittens over the past couple of years. All fixed and either re-released ( moms ) or tamed & adopted ( kittens ), but it seems like a never-ending battle. The feral cat organization volunteer that has come out to lend a hand in all of these episodes has trapped over four hundred this year :eek:.
Most Brits seem to disagree as a matter of pet-keeping philosophy, but I jumped fully on the indoor cat bandwagon a number of years ago. Successful outdoor enclosures excluded of course.
We have people who routinely trap and surrender their neighbors’ pet cats to the shelter where I volunteer. Makes for a ton of extra work for our already over populated, understaffed shelter. The $25 they pay to get their cats back doesn’t cover what it costs us to deal with them. I imagine the situation is the same at your local shelter. So…thanks for contributing to that.
Yes, they sure can - if they make an effort to do so. My 13 year old cat has been an outdoor cat since we moved into this house 3 years ago, and she hasn’t left our back yard once. We cat-proofed the high fence the week we moved in, and that was the end of that. I should say, we cat-proofed for older kitties - my cat has no interest in jumping over a fence. The cats belonging to other asshole cat owners who just let their cats roam free, however, can jump into my yard, making my cat miserable. It’s a bit of a self-solving problem, however - the cats eventually get run over on the busy street we live on.
You’d pay good money for fertilizer at the garden store, and you’re complaining when you get it free? And it’s worked into your garden with no effort on your part? Sheesh.
You should be “thanking” the owners of these cats for that. They are the one causing the problems by not taking proper care of their own animals.
The OP should live in our city. The leash law here applies to dogs and cats. Animal control can and will come out and catch cats that are running loose as well as dogs.