Tabernacle's plan is a kind one for kitties

[Boyd]

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15631647&BRD=2244&PAG=461&dept_id=453084&rfi=6

I just don't know what to think of this one. Certainly better than trapping and killing wild cats, but I have to wonder just how big a problem feral cats are around here? Their estimates range from 150 to 1000 in the whole township Is this a solution in search of a problem? Sounds like an expensive program...

I'm right on the edge of Medford and Shamong with several acres of woods and a old cat who goes out whenever he wants to. In three years I've only seen ONE other cat on my property and he was too friendly to be feral... he was probably just lost.

I'm all for taking in strays BTW, have done this with 4 cats over the years. The most recent one just died a year ago at 9 years old, after I spent literally thousands of dollars on him in vet bills over the years!

 

[Teegate]

I am not going to side with either side on this issue; however, I can't see how there are 150 to 1000 roaming cats. The reason I say that is at the location where our company was located we had a few cats that roamed the area, and in no time they had every disease you could think of and their health failed quite quickly. How can that many cat's make it through a summer in the wild without problems?

Guy

 

[Boyd]

I don't know.... where I used to live in upstate NY there were lots of stray dogs and cats. True that they probably didn't survive the winter there, but every year there was a new crop. One big problem is people "dumping" them after the cute kitten grows up.

In fact, that stray I just mentioned was one of these. He followed my daughter home one day... Then several years later her best friend admitted that it had been her kitten originally and her dad took him a few miles away and dumped him! He was skin and bones when we got him and losing most of his hair from all the fleas. Some people...

But that was a much more remote and rural area with lots of poor people barely making it. I don't see this sort of thing around here so much.

 

[woodjin]

We used to have strays in my area. We made the mistake of trying to take care of them. High vet bills and what a hassle. Always trying to get in the house. Living in the crawl space. Strays attact more strays too. The native fauna is not equiped to deal with them either. The birds, snakes, small rodents, squirrels, chipmonks were all gone. They are a little messed up that way, they just kill everything they can, even insects. Must be the domestication. Disease knocked them out and the wildlife has returned. Thank goodness they gravitate toward residential areas (for the most part). I feel bad for them, but they can be a nightmare.

Jeff