Cats, cats & more cats, & the lack of legislation governing their "owners"

Shewhomustbe...

This is somewhat a rant and a request for opinions & help.

Some background - apologies for the length!
I/we have seven cats we call our own (six are permanant indoor cats - except for when taken for walks on leads) One cat, Milly, is allowed come and go as initially there was an ownership issue and there are problems with her mixing with the other cats, she won't, three of the male cats are hers and herself and another female do NOT get on, she's terrified of her.
Five of the seven cats literally arrived on our doorstep (Milly appeared first looking for food and decided we'd be good enough to take care of her kittens, that started us off with four, (none of whom we had any joy trying to rehome), then Sheila started coming into the garden looking for food (stealing any we'd leave out for Milly!) And lastly I rescued Pixie & Hughie from the side of the road.

A few years ago a male tabby cat, Meatball, started popping around looking for food, he is uber shy and very very nervous so there is no way we could incorporate him into the house, I made a few inquiries and was told he probably belonged to someone in the village, I find this a bit difficult to believe based on his demeanour, he is VERY nervous around us, still, though I'm happy to say he is getting better, slowly!

About last summer another male cat, Simon, arrived on the scene, very friendly, not too long out of kittenhood (we think he is owned by a family up the road) He is however unneutered and never wormed. He appears at all hours of the day and night looking for food/company and is quite happy to sleep on our bed - we leave our ensuite window open for Milly.
The problem is himself and Meatball do NOT get on, surprising that! There have been a number of incidents, one quite bad when I had to drown them in water to stop the fight.

A few months ago another cat starting popping up on our window, a lovely female tabby cat, Socks, friendly but wary. She's okay around Meatball, both have arrived on occasion for food. She does not like Simon.

Then last night Sonny (our security guard!) let me know someone was at the window! I thought it was Socks as all I saw was a tabby, I went to the backdoor to give her some food and instead I'm met by TWO very hungry kitten(ish) male tabby cats. I gave them some food and after about 10minutes wondering what to do I made the decision to bring them into the house as it was below zero and I was worried about their wellbeing should they encounter either Meatball or Simon. I have them in our main bathroom, both are friendly, one went to sleep on my lap a couple of times.

The dilemma I'm having is what do I do now with number eleven and twelve?
I know the debate about keeping cats in is cruel etc etc but the problem I'm having is that NONE of the cats that people are allowing out are neutered/spayed so kittens are appearing left and right and who is supposed to care for those guys?? How am I supposed to track down the possible owners of any of the five that aren't ours? And then how do you make them take responsibility for their 'pet'?

I'm REALLY sick of the attitude people have regarding cats. Who can I get in touch with regarding getting some sort of legislation, or even awareness, to make people take responsibility with their cats like you have to with dogs?

So, my dilemma, do I try & get the two tabby cats into a rescue or do I put them back outside & hope for the best????
Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!

Dee_animallover

First of all fair play to you for looking after all those cats!

I totally agree with everything you said and I can relate to your situation.

My first 2 cats came to me after someone dumped them and they wandered into my house (couldn’t have picked a better one!) One had kittens soon after so I had to go and get them homes and get the mother spayed and got the other guy neutered. Only for me they would still be populating the area.

Then about a year ago on xmas day my SIL rang me to say there was 4 cats at her back door. We assumed they must be strays so she started feeding them. One in particular was very friendly and they kinda adopted her. The others would just come for food and go again whereas she was hanging around the whole time. Anyway a couple of months later she went to visit her elderly neighbour and there was the 4 cats lying in the sun in her front garden. They were her cats! When my SIL said to her that the black one ( the one she adopted) was going to have kittens she said “oh I don’t want anymore cats around the place”!!! Well then get them effing sorted, you thick ignoramous!!!!

So 3 kittens arrived and unfortuantly they had a very bad habit of climbing up into the engine of cars and my SIL’s sister ended up driving off with them in the engine. She only realised when she got home and heard meowing but there was only one of them so the other 2 must have fell/jumped out somewhere. So I was recruited to try and coax this tiny, frightened thing out of the engine. 3 hours later and one very peed off and scared little kitty – no joy. So to plan b – drive the car into the garage and bring down the mother cat and hopefully she’d coax him out. Long story short – it worked and they were the proud owners of a black male kitten named “Lucky” or as I liked to call him VFL – very fcuking lucky!!!!

So about a week later I was driving near my brothers house and spotted this little grey thing on the side of the very busy road. Pulled over and realised it was one of the other kittens – he must have fell out as he had a scrap on his nose. Long story short again, I ended up keeping him and he turned into the most gorgeous, friendly cat. No sign of the 3rd poor kitten.

So about another 6 months later the same cat had 4 kittens and I was summoned again because the mother cat had stopped feeding them and they were only 3 weeks old so I took them home and hand fed them for about a month and thankfully got homes for them all. Got the mother cat spayed a few weeks ago and now she is officially my brothers. I told them they should have sent the bill to the neighbour.

Poor cats get such a hard time of it – whatever hope you have of convincing people to neuter their dogs, you may as well be talking to the wall about cats. As my cousin said to me when I told him I was hand feeding the 4 kittens – “oh Id have put them in a bag….” Ya thanks that’s such a kick in the face, totally dismissing all my hard work.

Sorry that turned into a bit of a rant too!

Shewhomustbe...

Can't believe its been so long since I checked my thread! Thanks for your reply Dee_animallover and right back at ya with the fair play

The thing that happened with you SIL and her one/four cats is similar to ours with Milly, we found out that a older woman close to us "owned" her, never bothered worming, vaccinating or spaying her but she owned her, that was until she got a dog. :rolleyes:

To further add to my annoyance regarding people's attitude, Simon came in a couple of weeks ago a little under the weather. Watched him for a couple of days during which I found a cut on his tail which he wouldn't let me go near so off to the vets we went. Turns out he'd been in a fight with another cat and been bitten really badly on his tail and just above his bottom, had a touch of the flu and while there we also had him neutered (courtesy of an ISPCA voucher) Total cost for that trip €90, he'll also have to go back and get vaccinated. I have no problem paying (well I've a little bit of a problem ) to make him better and with the neutering he won't get into any more fights so fingers crossed no more injuries but if he has an owner I want to ring their neck.

We decided to keep the two kittens, Tibbs and Ollie, as we had terrible trouble the last time we tried rehoming cats and well they're just too darn cute!!