After reading so many threads here, plus articles and forums on other sites, I constantly see anecdotes about people rescuing abandoned kittens, finding stray cats in bad situations, yadda yadda.
Yet I can count on one finger the number of stray cats I've seen in the last year and a half: Literally one cat, who I saw late at night walking toward an enclosure that houses dumpsters for my apartment building, about 150 feet from my balcony. I never, ever see stray cats anywhere, and it's made me wonder if it's a regional thing or if the rescue organizations are just really good in my area.
(FWIW I live in Westchester County, NY, which is the second-wealthiest county in the U.S. and home to places like Scarsdale and Rye. I can look out the window right now and see Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, BMW...you get the idea. I feel like a pauper in my Honda lol.)
Last year, when I drove to North Carolina to vacation with my friends in the Outer Banks, I saw stray cats hanging around a gas station in Maryland, and one night when we were eating at an outdoor restaurant in NC, a beautiful Calico came up to us, started rubbing up against us, etc. I felt really bad because it seemed like this cat was so used to humans and was probably someone's lost pet. We fed him (probably not what the restaurant people wanted, but whatever) and petted him, but didn't go beyond that. I didn't know the area well, and for all I knew, it could have been someone's outdoor cat and maybe wasn't lost after all.
Anyway, like I said, I live in an apartment so it's not like I can feed strays by leaving food on the doorstep, but I do wonder if my area is just unusually good at managing feral populations, or if ferals in general hide from humans.
Yet I can count on one finger the number of stray cats I've seen in the last year and a half: Literally one cat, who I saw late at night walking toward an enclosure that houses dumpsters for my apartment building, about 150 feet from my balcony. I never, ever see stray cats anywhere, and it's made me wonder if it's a regional thing or if the rescue organizations are just really good in my area.
(FWIW I live in Westchester County, NY, which is the second-wealthiest county in the U.S. and home to places like Scarsdale and Rye. I can look out the window right now and see Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, BMW...you get the idea. I feel like a pauper in my Honda lol.)
Last year, when I drove to North Carolina to vacation with my friends in the Outer Banks, I saw stray cats hanging around a gas station in Maryland, and one night when we were eating at an outdoor restaurant in NC, a beautiful Calico came up to us, started rubbing up against us, etc. I felt really bad because it seemed like this cat was so used to humans and was probably someone's lost pet. We fed him (probably not what the restaurant people wanted, but whatever) and petted him, but didn't go beyond that. I didn't know the area well, and for all I knew, it could have been someone's outdoor cat and maybe wasn't lost after all.
Anyway, like I said, I live in an apartment so it's not like I can feed strays by leaving food on the doorstep, but I do wonder if my area is just unusually good at managing feral populations, or if ferals in general hide from humans.