Sunday, June 29, 2008

Dumpster Cats

Here are some pictures of the cats that I've been feeding:



From left to right, that's Randy (kitten), Joy (mother cat), and Earl (kitten). I'm guessing at the relationship between the cats. Joy isn't much larger than the kittens, but Frank thinks she's the mom.

The picture isn't black and white, but the cats are all variations of gray and white. I only see the cats at night, so I can't take great pictures of them.

The more I think about the cats, the more upset I get. I've been looking at shelters, the DE humane society, and various other options. I can donate money to the organizations, but what they really need are homes for the cats, and I can't take any more cats in. (Sydney won't allow it.) I adopted Sydney from a no-kill shelter--to support an organization that doesn't kill animals, but maybe I should have gone to a different type of shelter to save a kitty. Or, maybe I should have gone to one of the smaller organizations.

I have contacted Forgotten Friends, an organization that will spay/neuter stray cats and then release them back where they were. They figure that cats are better off in the wild, where some kind person will feed them, than at a shelter that could euthanize them. For the most part, I agree, but I read several stories of mean children/people abusing stray cats.

I was considering various scenarios for how things will play out for Earl, Randy, and Joy, and none of them seem good. Like, the three cats could be spayed/neutered and released back to the dumpster, but I won't be around much longer to feed them. On the other hand, what if Forgotten Cats decide that the kittens can be tamed and adopted out, but that the mother cat won't. So, the mother cat goes back to the dumpster without her kittens? That doesn't seem right.

These scenarios are why I don't like SUV. They don't package things up
nicely in the end. I'm not sure how to end this story nicely. I mean, of
course, all 3 cats would find good homes, but the adoption statistics posted on some of the sites I've looked at don't seem promising.

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