I made a thread in Cat Nutrition, asking for help with giving my spouse advice on what food to get while taking care of his mother's cats. I got a lot of good advice there. I still want to talk about this situation, but I don't think I need more food advice. Therefore, I've made this new thread. This is a long and really, really awful story. You all know how bad cat hoarding can get, and it got really, really bad.
This morning I wrote an email to a cat rescue network in Georgia. The next four paragraphs are this email, because it's the most complete description of the situation that I've written so far.
My spouse is taking care of his mother's property while she is recovering from a surgery. Unfortunately, his mother is a cat-hoarder. My spouse and his siblings are trying to prevent further breeding and cat deaths from neglect. The situation was very bad: they have found cat skeletons under couches and in piles of trash in the house. They are cleaning up the house and coming up with a system of having responsible people visit monthly to prevent deterioration of the situation. My spouse was getting the cats fixed, but one died after a neutering surgery and the vet has told him to get the cats' weight up before any more cats are fixed. All of the cats are currently outdoor cats, and being fed wet food twice daily to get their weight up. There are worms and communicable diseases in this group of cats.
Right now there are three categories of cats on the property: 1) cute and friendly kittens who should be adopted out to homes while they are still cute and adoptable, 2) friendly cats around and under the age of one year who would ideally be adopted out, and 3) feral or semi-feral young adults and older, battle-scarred cats who would probably do best staying on the property with the planned increased supervision. There are an unknown number of the cats on the property, but there may be as many as 40. The vast majority of the cats are around or under one year old. I believe that there is one litter of six healthy kittens old enough to adopt out right now, three kittens of unknown origin around the same age but not as healthy, and three kittens too young to adopt out. There are something like 6 lactating cats on the property, some of which are presumably the mothers of the six kittens with unknown origins, but some of which are unfortunately in the
semi-feral category.
My spouse and his siblings are paying to have the cats fixed and given their first set of vaccines, and they want to get at least the kittens into in-home foster situations to make them as adoptable as possible. If the only other option is to have the cats put into a kill shelter, the animals will stay on the property.
My spouse has a digital camera and a laptop with him but no internet access on the property. He can write up individual descriptions of the cats, along with pictures, and we can find a way to get these descriptions and images emailed to you. I suspect that the best solution for many of the adoptable young adults will be to keep them on the property while you help with listing them on PetFinder, but one disadvantage of that is that it will be difficult to litter box train the cats and figure out which ones are good with always using litter boxes while they are on the property. Some of the lactating cats would make good wet nurses to be paired with a kitten or kittens going to a foster home. The vast majority of the cats do not have names.
The approach that my spouse (I'll call him S) is taking about this keeps changing. He originally planned on just taking care of the property now and then never talking to his mother again, then he was going to fix everything up himself and depend on his mother (I'll call her C) to keep it going, then he was just going to walk out right now because any care he gave felt like making cats healthy in order to endure a concentration camp, then he was back to just feeding the cats and never coming back again, and, most recently, he's planning on adopting out as many cats as possible and then creating a spayed/neutered colony out of the feral, semi-feral, and just beat-up old farm cats.
I'm going to keep updating the situation here, and advice and encouragement would be appreciated.
This morning I wrote an email to a cat rescue network in Georgia. The next four paragraphs are this email, because it's the most complete description of the situation that I've written so far.
My spouse is taking care of his mother's property while she is recovering from a surgery. Unfortunately, his mother is a cat-hoarder. My spouse and his siblings are trying to prevent further breeding and cat deaths from neglect. The situation was very bad: they have found cat skeletons under couches and in piles of trash in the house. They are cleaning up the house and coming up with a system of having responsible people visit monthly to prevent deterioration of the situation. My spouse was getting the cats fixed, but one died after a neutering surgery and the vet has told him to get the cats' weight up before any more cats are fixed. All of the cats are currently outdoor cats, and being fed wet food twice daily to get their weight up. There are worms and communicable diseases in this group of cats.
Right now there are three categories of cats on the property: 1) cute and friendly kittens who should be adopted out to homes while they are still cute and adoptable, 2) friendly cats around and under the age of one year who would ideally be adopted out, and 3) feral or semi-feral young adults and older, battle-scarred cats who would probably do best staying on the property with the planned increased supervision. There are an unknown number of the cats on the property, but there may be as many as 40. The vast majority of the cats are around or under one year old. I believe that there is one litter of six healthy kittens old enough to adopt out right now, three kittens of unknown origin around the same age but not as healthy, and three kittens too young to adopt out. There are something like 6 lactating cats on the property, some of which are presumably the mothers of the six kittens with unknown origins, but some of which are unfortunately in the
semi-feral category.
My spouse and his siblings are paying to have the cats fixed and given their first set of vaccines, and they want to get at least the kittens into in-home foster situations to make them as adoptable as possible. If the only other option is to have the cats put into a kill shelter, the animals will stay on the property.
My spouse has a digital camera and a laptop with him but no internet access on the property. He can write up individual descriptions of the cats, along with pictures, and we can find a way to get these descriptions and images emailed to you. I suspect that the best solution for many of the adoptable young adults will be to keep them on the property while you help with listing them on PetFinder, but one disadvantage of that is that it will be difficult to litter box train the cats and figure out which ones are good with always using litter boxes while they are on the property. Some of the lactating cats would make good wet nurses to be paired with a kitten or kittens going to a foster home. The vast majority of the cats do not have names.
The approach that my spouse (I'll call him S) is taking about this keeps changing. He originally planned on just taking care of the property now and then never talking to his mother again, then he was going to fix everything up himself and depend on his mother (I'll call her C) to keep it going, then he was just going to walk out right now because any care he gave felt like making cats healthy in order to endure a concentration camp, then he was back to just feeding the cats and never coming back again, and, most recently, he's planning on adopting out as many cats as possible and then creating a spayed/neutered colony out of the feral, semi-feral, and just beat-up old farm cats.
I'm going to keep updating the situation here, and advice and encouragement would be appreciated.