Reality

People move and leave behind cats as if they were nothing that mattered. Apparently they didn't matter but the cat didn't feel that way. He's scared, lost, wondering where his people are. He waits, watches, waits, and watches, scared and hungry. Eventually he has to fill his belly with whatever choice morsels are available. Frequently it's several days old garbage from dumpsters. Sometimes it's the night's toss outs from a restaurant the cat was lucky enough to find. This food source becomes his new home if he's fortunate enough to be tolerated and not driven away or harmed and left to die starved,scared and exhausted. Cats are no different from people in the fact that they are hungry and need food to survive.

Chances are that you may never see him because he learns to live in the shadows. He's moved into unknown territory and it's often a high traffic area because that's where the food is, with that comes danger. He doesn't understand automobiles as they whiz by and barely miss him, and many times they don't miss. Some people aim for them. Surprising? If he survives he learns to become afraid of people and machines. He hides during the day and comes out at night when people go home to sleep and the streets then become his world. Sometimes there are only little cat eyes peeping out onto the outside world , watching, waiting, while no one sees into theirs. But they are still living, breathing, feeling creatures who are trying to live against all odds after being thrown into a world of terror. They are the forgotten ones. And they deserve better. In the beginning many of them started out as someone's little sweetheart. But it went terribly wrong, often when they weren't a kitten anymore.

Some people do see these cats and do their best to take care of them. There are kind souls who feed these hungry cats who've learned to survive on the streets. It gives some people a sense of fulfillment. It gives them purpose when they had none. The trouble is that they feed them but don't take care of having them spayed or neutered. Many times it's because they can't catch them, feral cats are unsocialized and don't trust humans even though some rely on them. Not to mention that it isn't safe or smart to try to catch a feral or scared cat without the necessary equipment. Other times they aren't fixed because the caretakers can't afford to have several stray or feral cats altered. Feeding cats without spaying or neutering makes them healthier and their offspring healthier and more likely to survive, also increasing the colony size and making it even more costly to spay and neuter. But that isn't something that kind hearted people think of in the beginning when they start to feed two, three or four cats. It only begins to dawn on the caretaker when the litters begin to arrive. That's when people start to understand the population explosion and the necessity of "fixing" the problem.

Spaying and neutering cats as well as dogs and other pets is the answer to decreasing the overwhelming numbers of animals being euthanized every day in the United States. In fact, spay and neuter is extremely crucial, to keep shelters from having to kill animals at enormous rates daily. This is happening in shelters because there isn't enough room for them. There isn't enough room for the amounts of friendly pets that come in daily and aren't adopted either, so ferals have no chance whatsoever. There just aren't enough homes for all the animals breeding out of control . Eventually these colonies, which are increasing in size, are going to become a problem and will be taken by animal control because of complaints. It's not the cat's fault, he's following natural instincts. The fact is that ferals don't get adopted. They get euthanized, or more simply killed. It can't be prettied up and put away, they are killed.

The kind and humane answer to feral cats isn't euthanasia but a program called Trap, Neuter, Return, TNR for short. This program takes a cat that is a stray or feral and makes certain that he is altered, vaccinated, ear-tipped and returned to his environment. The left ear tip is a universal signal that the cat has been de-sexed and is living in a colony that is being monitored. Those colonies become stabilized, they remain a family and begin to die off without reproducing. It keeps the cats out of kill shelters. It retains room for more adoptable pets in the shelters and it's a better solution for everyone. It doesn't happen overnight, but gradually the reductions in numbers will become apparent. One day, when our dreams meet reality and the world begins to care, there will be no more cats unloved, unwanted, and homeless.

One of the saddest facts is there is estimated to be nearly 70 million feral cats in the United States alone, just imagine how many there are in the world. We have so far to go. And so few to help.

The Reality of Feral Cats

Becoming Feral

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi