How do you deal with stray cats?

[John White]

We live in the country. We have really had a run on city people comming out here and dumping their cats. We have already taken in 4 stray cats, had them spayed, nutered and shots. Plus, at my shop at another location I have two cats there that I feed and take care of. We love them all and feed them and give them good care. But we have just about had enough of it. The local county shelter will not take cats, nor the humane agency. City people wont take responsibility for their own problems. They dont realize many times when they dump a cat it gets run over, coyotes get it or it gets shot. I dont feel right about catching them and dumping them again and I feel really bad about having to kill them. One cat in paticulair, I could write a book about her, showed up here about 4 years ago, hates other cats, will not stay here at night, she leaves and stays in the woods, shows up here every moring before I go to work, eats, and rides to work with me, loves it, loves to ride in my big truck when I go out on a job. Hangs around the shop sometimes during the day, then when 5 oclock comes and the church bell up on the hill rings 5. she shows up for a ride home, she got caught in a wind storm once and collaposed a lung, got hit by a car once, broke her pelvis and rear leg, was near death, we didnt have the $40 to have her put to sleep, put her in a basket and put her under a shade tree outside, to die, she laid there 4 or 5 days suffering, fed her with a eye droper, finally one day she tipped the basket over and crawled under a neighbors abandoned car with no wheels on it. I couldnt crawl under there and get her and out, every time I took a rake and tried to drag her out she screamed in pain. Left her there for the night, next day I checked and she was gone, I figured the coyotes got her. About 3 months later I was out side and this real scraney cat jumpet down from the cats feeding dish and run, I called for it and I just couldnt believe it was "Fiesty" about half starved to death, you could see all her ribs. Nursed her back to health. Another time she didnt show up for a ride to work in the morning, I came home at noon with my dump truck and had a load of gravel to dump after lunch. I went to the job site after lunch, about 20 mi away and backed up to dump the gravel, I head a terriable scream, I thought I had backed over some ones cat. I shut the engine off, got out and looked under the wheels, no cat, raised my hood and there she was sitting back on top of the transmission, there was Fiesty. Just giving me a dumb look. I could go on with stories about her. But again I cant handle any more stray cats. And I had better get off hers because I see Fiesty comming out of the woods wanting a ride to work.

 

[Davinator]

Absolutely amazing story! Sounds like she has just about used up her allotted nine.

 

[Soundguy]

how do we deal with stray cats? ( dogs)

if it looks badly diseased.. i call animal control to trap / kill it.

if it is the normal 'homeless drifter type'.. I feed it and give it a warm palce to sleep.. once it is used to me enough to catch it, it goes and gets desexed and vaccinated and any other minor health issues corrected, then returned to heal a few days in the barn, then back to living on the 'inmate' farm.

food and warm place to sleep / place to get out of the rain. Play cards with the other cats, dogs and animals that also eat at the 'soup kitchen' my farm has turned out to be...

 

[TripleR]

Surprisingly, we don't get stray cats out where I live but my brother on another farm does and he deals with them pretty much like you andSoundguy. He has four in the house and an unknown number living in his sheds, shop etc. The population seems to be self regulating due to disagreements among the herd and coyotes. He has some real stories too.

 

[Soundguy]

our outside cat population actually LOWERED our possum, raccoon, fox, and coyote population here.

i used to loose 10-12 + chicken a year du to the above mentioned preditors.

once i built up a good outdoor cat population.. they hunted out all the small game that the preditors would eat.. and then they moved on.. then my chicken losses went near 0.

and the cat's are not predating the chix either.. so win-win for me.

also.. saw a lack of snakes the last few years. simply no prey animals in the area ps.. no chew holes in bags of animal feed anymore.. win-win-win

soundguy

 

[TripleR]

My brother's place is a lot more like a Disney movie, racoons, possum etc., come right up to his porch and hang out with the cats, now if a cat wanders out into the coyote DMZ, then all bets are off and there is an opening in the herd.

 

[MossRoad]

How do you deal with stray cats?

Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce!
:licking:

Hahahahaha!!!

If they are all friendly and we don't recognize them, we call the Humane Society. They are a no-kill shelter and will find them a good home. Same thing goes for sickly looking ones. If they appear healthy, yet warry of people I throw a hadfull of ice cubes at them and yell real loud (ice cubes are the handiest projectiles to the back door) hoping they won't come back.... nothing worse than having our house cats having a 3:00am hissy fit with some stray outside the window.

 

[Ed of all trades]

There was an article in the paper a couple of days ago about how not to deal with them. Some people saw a cat running around with an arrow sticking through it they called the cops and someone said they saw a man with a bow earlier, He is out on $$1500 bail waiting for his trial animal cruelty charge.

 

[deerseeker001]

three years ago one them has adopted us,and now we have 8 outside cats.they are a lot of fun.they have there own personalizes.

 

[JDgreen227]

how do we deal with stray cats? ( dogs)

if it looks badly diseased.. i call animal control to trap / kill it.

if it is the normal 'homeless drifter type'.. I feed it and give it a warm palce to sleep.. once it is used to me enough to catch it, it goes and gets desexed and vaccinated and any other minor health issues corrected, then returned to heal a few days in the barn, then back to living on the 'inmate' farm.

food and warm place to sleep / place to get out of the rain. Play cards with the other cats, dogs and animals that also eat at the 'soup kitchen' my farm has turned out to be...

BLESS YOU for your compassion...every stray that has ever shown up here has been fed and housed in the barn at the least, and two of them have become our most loved house cats. Sad thing is, most are too wary of traps to be caught so they meet an untimely end somehow. One winter we had a semi-domesticated stray cat living in the house (see attachment for his pic) and he is now fully part of the household, while the big barn had four strays living in it. Come spring they had all disappeared.

 

[Soundguy]

our 3 most beloved cats right now came from a throw away mother that had some ferral babies. We raised them from eyes open on up.. bottle feeding every 2 hrs.. warm washcloth to fake moms tounge.. slept on a mild sleeping blanked.. etc.

our most lovable pets now...

 

[Katahdin]

Wow, that is an amazing story! Its very kind of you to take care of Fiesty like that.

We've taken in three barn cats from PA that are now house cats. We brought in two feral cats from Friends of Felines to live in the barn, they were neutered. Those two cats got displaced by two other stray cats, we trapped a male, got him neutered and released. Then we found the female had a kitten. We trapped the mom and got her fixed and back to the kitten. I then trapped the kitten and now she's our youngest house cat. We still feed the mother cat everyday, but the male cat is now gone.

Indoors we now have 5 cats and one pit bull mix. The cats walk all over the pit, its fun to see.

 

[CBW1999]

We had the same problem for years when the neighbors had the barn across the road. Everyone in the county it would seem- thought it a great idea to drop off unwanted cats. I guess they thought they would become "barn" cats. Often times young litters were dropped off.

Every day I would scrape cats off the road that got hit by one of the many vehicles that travel to and from the farm down the road. The true/original barn cats that were around fed themselves, kept to themselves and went off to die by themselves. It was getting really bad for a while with different cats showing up on our door step and it wasn't fair to our indoor cats.

The old farm was purchased and the barns torn down. End of problem I thought. For a while at least.

A close neighbor had a female cat and couldn't be bothered to have it fixed. She would have a litter and most would die off because they didn't give mom enough food to support her needs for the kittens. When said neighbor moved away, they left the cat behind WITH a new litter of kittens! The were aware that she had the kittens before they left and didn't want to be bothered. We ended up having to round them up and have animal control come get them. All except for momma cat. She apparently found her way back into the trailer and got locked in. by the time we found her, she was wasted away and she was put down.

Sorry for the rant..... Animal control is more concerned with dogs, the shelter basically won't accept cats from individuals (so they don't become a dumping ground) they only take them from animal control....so up here, a vicious cycle exists that apparently no one cares to break. It is sad and unfortunate that cats are treated this way.

I stopped catching strays because of the risk to my own animals inside, cannot afford to feed them for days until someone can come pick them up (if they will). If the animal appears healthy, I discourage them as nicely as I can (spray water at them, throw snowball..)

If they appear ill (Neurological signs, obvious injury, malnourished)- I take care of the situation swiftly. I have domestic and farm animals to protect so I treat a sick animal as a sick animal- same as I would a racoon, skunk etc.

Not my favorite thing and still sucks to have to do it.

 

[hchxoom]

While I understand those that like them for pest control, they are incredibly destructive to desirable wildlife, too.

 

[CalG]

Ditch cougars

season starts in April, ends late in March

You do what you do....I don't

 

[J_J]

Bang, Bang, shovel shovel.

 

[20 20]

I have saved over 12, 5 still stay with us. I feel for the strays but they are BAD news, raise heck with other critters. Hate to be the bad guy but enough is enough and as I've written they are not good on the enviro or other critters. If they come here they have met their end.

 

[Soundguy]

you do realize that if you nueter/spay a cat and feed it well.. it hunts (less). if you want it to hunt even less.. feed it alot and make it fat.

i have some fat ones that hunt -0-

 

[toppop52]

I either feed them and take them in, I've saved 5 in the last 20 years, or I trap them and take them to the shelter. If they were a true danger I'd shoot one if I had to, same with any dog or other animal, or human for that matter.

 

[LMan1967]

cant read without paragraphs, sorry