FERAL CATS BREEDING AND DYING IN NEIGHBORHOOD!

[kittkatt1229]

On my street in my neighborhood is a poor elderly man who feeds all the stray cats in his yard. But one thing, they keep breeding on our street and the kittens are born sick and die after birth or a few weeks! I rescued a litter 7 months ago and two of the four kittens died but I kept the surviving two who were small and very sick. Within a week a mother cat had kittens under my neighbors shed and the mother cat was killed by her dog. I saved the two newborn kittens and found a foster family who took them in and fed them newborn kitten milk. The kittens survived, but soon after the mother cat of my two kittens had two more litters and the kittens died!

THIS CAN NOT GO ON! THE HUMANE SOCIETY SAID TO LEAVE THE KITTENS UNDER THE SHED EVEN THOUGH THE MOM WAS DEAD! THEY WILL NOT DO ANYTHING AND THIS MAN IS OVERWHELMED AND CAN NOT SPAY AND NEUTER THEM! NOR CAN HE CATCH ALL OF THEM! Is there anyone willing to help this man and help catch these cats to do a catch and release for spaying and neutering?

Please reply to the form and I may message you with news on the location involved. Do not blame the elderly man, it is not his fault. He loves cats.

This is what Gibson looked like when we saved him. He had a large abcess on his eye and another on his cheek.

kittens1 may 9 2 003.jpg

• kittkatt1229
• Dec 17, 2015

This is Nikki. She had and upper resperatory infection and an eye infection of the second eyelid.

kittens1 may 9 2 005.jpg

• kittkatt1229
• Dec 17, 2015

And here they are today.

Gibson23.jpg

• kittkatt1229
• Dec 17, 2015

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• kittkatt1229
• Dec 17, 2015

 

[shadowsrescue]

Do you have an ASPCA or rescue groups in your area that can help?  The Humane society should at least send someone out to investigate.  I would do a google search on cat rescue groups in your area.  Contact them all and ask for help.  They need to send out a team to help do TNR on the cats.  You also can look into Alley Cat Allies.  They might be able to help you find a group to contact.

Something really should be done.  Yes, the man is kind and loves the cats, but he is making the situation worse by feeding the cats and not having them spayed/neutered.  Since they are fed, they are not strong enough to continue reproducing. 

If you have the means or possibly you can find a low cost spay/neuter clinic in your area, you can get a humane trap or two and start to get the cats spayed/neutered.  Some low cost clinics will offer vouchers for $10 per cat.  Traps can sometimes be rented for a deposit from the humane society.  You also can buy them yourself for around $40 each. 

The issue will begin to dissipate if the cats are spayed/neutered.  Then the man can continue to feed them.  Once the cats are spayed/neutered they will be ear tipped to identify they are now sterile.  This will help to identify the cats. 

Thank you for wanting to help these cats.  Do some google searching and start calling/emailing local rescue groups.  You also can ask local vets for help.

 

[kittens mom]

I have one neighbor and they would bring home whole litters of kittens and then turn them loose a few months later to breed and die. If you live in the US I promise you that they would not tell you to leave two puppies under the shed to starve and die after their mother was killed by a cat. ShadowsRescue   gave excellent advice on how to help manage the colony. Just as important is to try and ID the source of the problem. Feral cats are the direct result of someone like my neighbors who are irresponsible pet owners. I have been there having to decide if it was worse to watch them starve or reproduce and have sickly dying un socialized kittens under every bush and outbuilding. If you cannot get them TNR you should consider capture and taking them to a shelter. It's a much kinder death that the one they face now.

 

[kittkatt1229]

We have tried and there is no SPCA around here. Only the humane society witch doesn't even save these beagles left in cages that we have tried to rescue for years. They tried to sue us for that.

I nor the man have enough money to pay for even one of the cats to be spayed/ neutered. The man is also scared of the vet and rescuers because the last cat he owned was mistakinly killed by the vet thinking he was another cat scheduled to be euthanized. He didn't even want to take one of the kittens with a broken foot to the vet so he asked me to do so but it was too late sadly.

The rescues down here are worth nothing because they either do nothing or wait days to weeks before checking on a case. They even baggered my neighbor who told us about the newborns under her shed and told her she made a big mistake by touching them and that another mom cat would have came to feed them. My poor neighbor was so distraught and thought they were going to die because of her. But they in fact SURVIVED because of her. I'm not even sure the rescues know anything about animals. They waited WEEKS to come rescue a red dog on our street and the same neighbor adopted the dog, but they almost put him down because they thought he had pit bull in him. It is the same dog who killed the mom cat cause she got in his pin.

If you have any links to rescue sites that are international and in Pensacola, please do link so I can do something. I have researched this for a wile now.

Newborns I rescued.

kittens1 may 9 2 023.jpg

• kittkatt1229
• Dec 18, 2015

 

[Norachan]

I'm very sorry to hear about your situation. I faced a similar problem when I first moved into this area about 6 years ago. Lots of people feed feral cats but no one made any attempt to control the population, which lead to lots of unhealthy cats and sick kittens. There aren't any shelters or TNR groups here and the local Animal Control simply euthanise all animals they accept after 72 hours.

I managed to find a local vet to help me TNR the cats in my neighbourhood. It's not something commonly done in this country, but when I explained how many cats needed to be fixed my vet agreed to give me a third off the cost of all spays and neuters. It still cost a lot, but I worked out that I could afford to fix either 2 female or 3 male cats a month.

Here are some organisations you could try.

http://cat.rescueshelter.com/Florida

You might not be able to get a lot of help, but even if you can borrow a trap here and get one cat fixed there it will make a difference. It took me three years to get the colony I care for under control. Every single cat fixed is one less to worry about.

It's great that you have been able to help some of the kittens. Good luck with getting help for the others.

 

[catsknowme]

 I definitely feel your pain! I am in a rural area of the Eastern Sierra and there are no rescue groups for cats here.  Fortunately, we are blessed with I.C.A.R.E., a volunteer non-profit who pays for the TNR of ferals and also provides discount neutering for income-qualified households.  When I first began managing a large colony at our supermarket parking lot, I had 23 identified cats plus various transients. That was in 2007. Now I (I should say, my community, esp since a retired couple took over feeding and providing shelters this year) we are down to about 7 residents with 3 females to be TNRd.

My vet gives me a huge discount on vaccinations so all the TNRd kitties are inoculated. You might try appealing to some of the local churches, especially the United Methodists (our doctrine is that we are given STEWARDship, not dominion, over Creation and have been entrusted with caring for His creatures) and the couple that helps me are 7th Day Adventists.

God gave your neighbor the good heart to care for the kitties and it is the responsibility of all in his community to help an elder in his mission to care for the cats. Unfortunately, many people don't see life that way. I have been yelled at by residents of a trailer park for not doing more to eliminate the stray cats in THEIR park - I try to gently remind them that THEY live there, not me, and "when you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem"!

One more suggestion that I have is that maybe you can ask the local vet if they will accept donations to be assigned directly for the cats in your neighborhood.  People are sometimes more willing to donate to the vet if there isn't a bona fide rescue group around. Also, if you have a local 4-H club or youth mentoring group, youi might enlist the kids to help fundraise and even learn how to trap and transport the cats!

Please keep us posted if anything works! Till then, prayers and vibes coming your way

 

[noracatowner101]

Very sorry to hear about this I recommed talking to an animal rescue center, and asking them to take in these cats/kittens, and if they can't, to ask if they can spay/neuter them for no cost, since no one is responsible.