Why it’s V.I.P. to neuter your male cats

This was a story that came out in one of the local rescue agency’s newsletter.

Tom was a beautiful tiger cat that roamed the neighborhood because his owners hadn’t bothered to neuter him. Tom met up with Maggie and they had a one night stand. Maggie had been abandoned weeks before her night with Tom and with no home to go back to, she had searched for food and a safe, warm place to give birth. Barely more than a kitten herself, she found a garbage bag that smelled of food. Clawing desperately through the bag, Maggie gorged herself on stale French fries, crusts of bread and decaying meat. Her stomach full for the first time in weeks, she curled up in a crushed cardboard box. This would be her haven, her salvation and the place where she would bear her six tiny kittens.

A few days after their birth, Maggie realized that three of her kittens were not going to make it. Weak and underweight, they struggled with every breath. Without adequate food for herself, Maggie’s body simply could not produce enough milk to feed all six.

Maggie knew they would not live long so obeying an instinct deep within, she made a painful decision. She gathered up her three stronger kittens and moved them to another box farther down the alley. Finding food for herself and the remaining kittens was all she could manage. As her surviving kittens grew, Maggie taught them to protect themselves from harm. They learned the skills necessary to stay alive, just as Maggie had, and they became wild, or feral. Soon other cats and kittens, driven by the same survival instincts, joined them near their food source. Another “colony” was formed……anonymous……

The happy ending would be when one of the many shelters volunteers or a feral cat agency or a passing stranger, or we….find Maggie and her kittens and rush them to safety. But sadly too many times this is not the way the story goes.

My family rescued 4 litters of feral kittens from a local trash facility before we were able to trap the father and the mother. We trapped two feral kittens from another trash facility but the mother and the other kittens were killed by a fox before we could get them. Not to mention the many others we’ve trapped at various locations.

One trash facility is about 7 miles from a city. People who believe their cats should go out and let their cats roam often discover their cat is missing. The cats climb into dumpsters drawn in by the smell of food or chasing a rat or bird. The dumpsters are picked up by the local trash trucks to be taken to the trash facility. The poor cats get stuck in the dumpsters and are then transported to the trash facility.

Many of those cats were crushed to death when the trucks loaded the dumpster….The others that were lucky enough to survive the loading were so terrified when the trucks dumped the load into the trash pit that they came bolting out of the trucks…and were never seen again.

We trapped many tame cats that arrived at the trash facility on those trucks. One poor cat, Asa, was a beautiful Siamese. We rushed him to the vet because he was having difficulty breathing. His chest had been crushed when the dumpster was loaded onto the truck. He had to be euthanized. Another cat, Jack, had a soup can stuck on his head for heaven knows how long before we found him. Mateo was skin and bones. I could go on and on about the cats we rescued out of there.

We need to be responsible and spay and neuter our cats. We need to educate our family and friends. It’s just as important to neuter the males as it is to spay our females. Please be responsible! And please, keep your cats inside.