[Aimee]

..... if you don't visit the social forum much.

http://musicals.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=59788

[Rumblepurr]

I do not mean to throw water on this (so to speak)...

What you have described in your "journal" is worldwide. One has only to travel to your local Humane Society Shelter, and you find a lot of the same. I am currently writing a Prequel on my Fanfiction on the subject as well. Herbert and Tina exist everywhere...

Shelters try to find homes for these animals, but they can only do so much. There are some "Life" shelters that will not use euthanasia, but will spay/neuter any animal brought to them. If your plea does not get people to help out, then perhaps we should also say this: Support your local shelter. If everyone did - through contributions and through adoptions - then all the Herberts and Tinas would all be in good homes right now. Another thing to consider - if you do not breed animals, then spay or neuter them... If you own an animal, make sure they stay either in your house or yard. Animals who wander loose can be injured by any number of means, contact disease, or worse... If you have children and they want a pet, then make sure they know what caring for that pet means. If they lose interest in a pet, then YOU adopt it before taking it back to a pound...

For many of us, that cat or dog is like a child... Just think about that for a while...

Still a good cause, Aimee... Thanks for posting...
Rumblepurr
The Writer Cat.

[littlgriz1]

[Drumdraper]

A notice to all cat owners too. One way to help cats is to keep them indoors only. That way they won't harm the environment and they won't be attacked by other cats as well.

[darkmage]

I'm a big believer in keeping them indoors only.

However, cats are significant predators and kill a lot of pests. My neighbours across the street do TNR (trap neuter release) where the animals are neutered/vaccinated, and adoptable ones (inc. kittens) are socialized and located with homes. The others are released back into the wild.

We have quite the feral colony in my neighbourhood. They do a really good job of keeping the insect and pigeon populations down. Bear in mind that cats eat lizards, scorpions, cockroaches, roof rats (citrus-loving rats native to SE Asia, imported here, that do a lot of damage by chewing through sheet metal, stucco, vents, and hoses, and can easily chew through quarter-inch sheet rock. Diamond mesh and cats are your friends if you've got them), and small birds. I like scorpions but a lot of people consider them pests. And the pesticides used to kill the three to four inch flying roaches do a lot of damage to lizards and other animals in the food chain that eat them. I'd much rather clean up cat waste than deal with pesticide contamination.

The keyword is responsibility. If the animals are wild, let them be wild. But if they're owned, there's no excuse for not having them spayed/neutered and keeping them indoors.

[Belle]

It's interesting how pet ownership varies from country to country... I adore my kitties, troublesome tho they are, but in England it seems the vast majority of pet cats are allowed outdoors. Ours are all neutered, of course. They roam outside, cross the road to patrol the railway embankment and school grounds, so much of their world is outdoors that to remove that from them would seem very cruel. Our cats are not feral - the the oldest was feral for a while, tho - but they're animals before they're pets, they're part of the local ecology. They're pretty independant and do as they please. As far as I can tell, this is far more common that keeping cats indoors! Plus, a lot of english houses aren't big enough to keep cats happily indoors.

I don't own the cats, I merely serve them!

[Moongewl]

It really does depend on where you live. The neighbors who live behind us(on the street on the other side of the block) have a cat who comes to "visit" us and will walk right up to our door and demand to be let in. He's added our house to the ones he owns, I s'pose.
In our neighborhood, there are only a few cats, and I think they're all fixed. There are quite a few rodents--rabbits, mostly, but I've seen an opossum or two--that coexist peacefully enough with the cats in the area. The only creatures around here who might cause trouble are the humans, and our neighborhood's mostly made up of quiet older people who have better things to do than hurt cats.