Wednesday night I was back trapping at the new colony. We got two older kittens right away and then of course a guy showed up and proceeded to fix his car right there so that scared the rest off. I think there may still be two pregnant females, argh, but these cats are proving harder to trap than I expected.
Still, we got a male and a female, about 5-6 months old.
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| Byron, the male kitten, Shelley was too shy for photos |
Yesterday Denise and I went to visit a woman she met at the food bank who used to have many cats. Now she has four females and one male, all unfixed so of course she also has three litters of kittens, somewhere between a few days and weeks old, she's not exactly sure. She wants to keep the adults but thankfully is willing to give up the kittens as soon as they are old enough. As a start, I'm going to take the tom cat to be neutered this week so at least there aren't more kittens.
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| Big tom cat, daddy to many |
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| One litter of kittens |
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| Two mommas together with the kittens |
It's a real problem, many people don't have the money to fix their cats, even at the low cost THS spay neuter clinic, and so the cycle goes on. I wish I had the money to fix everyone's cats but I don't, so I just have to figure out how to do the best I can with this situation.
Oddly, this woman lives just down the block from where I found those 12 kittens and 3 adults last fall who were clearly dumped. I have strong suspicions that is was her, she used to have way more cats, and all the cats she still has are grey and look very similar. Wouldn't that be quite the coincidence, if you can call it that.
I moved to Toronto for graduate school from Baltimore. I was SHOCKED by the prohibitive costs of veterinary care. The cost of neutering/spaying animals is seriously problematic. In Baltimore, it costs about $30-40 to spay and neuter. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteIn our town it is around $300.00 to spay. Closer to the city it goes up a bit and in the city of Ottawa you can pay up to $700.00 by the time you have vaccinated and prepped the cat for surgery. It is disgusting and I blame the vets for the situation that our shelters are in. Teeth extraction is another problem. It cost a friend $1500 to have 5 teeth extracted from her 11 year old cat. There are people who won't pay it and instead will dump their cat at the shelter. Then it is discovered how bad the teeth are and now it's the shelters problem. It all goes back to the greedy vets.
ReplyDeleteRight now I've got a foster return for Toronto Cat Rescue who needed (suprise) costly tooth cleaning. He's a wonderful playful cat, who was abandoned because of the cost of vet care.
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