Uh, whut?

[*blackrose]

That is pure bullshit.

If there is a TINY KITTEN sitting out in plain sight, with no mother visible, it's likely the offspring of a feral cat and SHOULD be collected and given to a shelter or to someone who can raise it.

Bottle raising a healthy newborn kitten means getting up every hour, on the hour, for feeding and stimulation. If you can go through that, barring any other immense medical issues, I can almost guarantee the cat would live. I was given a newborn with placenta still on his feet, who had been baking in the Mexico sun for hours, and he lived with hourly feedings for a week and a half. No colostrum, and I kept him in as sterile an environment as possible while he was still young. I fed him nutri-cal in addition to the homemade formula which consisted of evaporated milk, some egg yolk and some distilled water.

I would rather see a kitten be collected and given to a shelter than to grow up to be a feral cat that people shoot at, poison and consider pests.

^ This.

The litter Apollo came from was found as newborns, most of them dead. Apollo and his sister made it. I had him at two days old. Took care of him round the clock every two hours for almost a month. Then we were able to go down to every four hours round the clock. He's alive and well at two years now. I just took in a 3.5 week old kitten (she's about six weeks now) after someone found her and couldn't keep her. She was destined for the shelter, but since our clinic works with a rescue and adopts out cats, I offered to foster her if she could be adopted out when she's older.

And add me to the group that would rather see a kitten humanely euthanized than grow up to be feral and/or die from exposure. Yes, a cat can survive in the wild, and yes, it is a life (and not always a horrible life)...but as feral animals they are pests, plain and simple.

 

[sillysally]

Although I see both sides of the argument, I'd have to go with the option of picking the kitten up and either caring for it myself, finding someone who can, or taking to the shelter even if it means being euthed. The last option may sound harsh, but in our area there are TONS of just random loose cats producing more and more kittens. The office Jack's acupuncture vet works out of is swamped with kittens--everytime I go in there they have a crate of adoptable kittens behind the desk, an adult cat or two for adoption in the lobby, and more adoptable kittens in the back. They said that this year has been terrible, due to the mild winter they are up to their eyeballs in kittens. Our neighborhood has so many cats running around it seems like I never see the same one twice. This past winter I had two show up at my door, meowing to be let in, in the space of a week. I felt badly for them but there was nothing I could do--the shelter was closed at that hour and I couldn't bring them in the house for the safety of our resident animals.

The options for a feral kitten THAT young are pretty much die some sort of unpleasant death or survive and grow up to make more feral kittens, who in turn make MORE feral kittens. Neither seem viable options to me.

 

[sparks19]

Yeah I have to also go with picking up the cat even if it means being euthanized. Why would anyone advocate to just leave them be to grow up, reproduce MORE and keep perpetuating the cycle and just addig to the over population problem?

Yeah if they went to a shelter they would probably be euthanized himanely almost immediately.... WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU? There are too many cats and kittens and jot enough homes.

Leave them to die to exposure, hit by a car, shot, poisoned, etc etc etc rather than a humane euthanization and eliminate the possibility of them producing MORE kittens to suffer the same fate

 

[Sweet72947]

First, we need to do away with the mentality that the only options are "death" and "horrible death". The rescues here will take baby kittens quite often, you just have to be persistent and contact multiple groups. We have tools for networking at our disposal, we just have to use them. Once I posted a "found" ad on CL for an orange cat wearing a pink collar that showed up randomly in my neighborhood. A rescue actually emailed me and said if I caught it they'd scan it for a microchip for me, and even take it in to their program. I politely declined their offer because this cat was terrified of us (my mom tried to trap him/her in our garage, and he basically almost broke his head open on the window trying to get out), and it was kinder to just let him/her live in our yard.

Next, realize that many kill shelters are not in the business of helping animals, they are in the business of "catch and kill", which is what animal pounds were founded on. An internet search will bring up an article about how, in NYC, stray animals were rounded up, a few pretty ones kept out for pets/breeding, and the others stuffed in a cage and drowned in the lake (I have this article saved on my lap top if anyone would like me to email it to them). We have, thankfully, moved past the days when that was acceptable, and it is also fast becoming unacceptable to kill healthy, adoptable animals in the back room away from the public eye.

I have helped care for a properly maintained feral colony. It was in a camping park, and the park was not crawling with cats, it was the same cats every day that came to be fed. A few were even taken in by the cat ladies who I helped with this colony. Those cats did not fight, did not breed, and did not ruin the camping park. There were a few friendly cats there (especially a grey tabby female named Li'l Grey) I wish I could have taken in and found homes for, but having no money I could not.

As for it being hard to place cats, well, lots of people don't go to kill shelters to look for a pet because they find it too depressing. Fancy Cats, a rescue who holds events in Petsmart, adopts out a LOT of cats at those events. There are homes looking for cats, the object is to reach them. Networking, marketing, educational outreach, and low-cost spay/neuter resources are all valuable tools for combating the homeless pet problem.

If I'm idealistic, than I shall be idealistic. I cannot in good conscience support killing.