so, i met yet *another* cat on the way home the store today (stray cats always gravitate in my direction for some reason). anyway, the poor thing was shivering in the freezing cold and quite obviously malnourished. kitty conspicuously perched himself upon someones front steps to greet me as i walked by, meeowing beseechingly in my direction (and for the fancy feast in my grocery bag). so naturally i opened a can of catfood (that i had just bought for my own cat) and scooped it out for him (with my fingers, ugh)… and walked away as he gobbled it up. i wanted to do more and i felt bad leaving him behind in the freezing cold like that.. but at least he won’t go hungry tonight. sigh.
it needs to be said – for the love of gaud people… please FEED and take CARE of your animals
and even if you don’t have a cat of your own, maybe we shouldn’t just walk on by, ignoring those that are hungry & neglected… cuz you know, starving to death in the freezing cold would really suck
all i’m saying is… if you can, be kind, help the kitty
and maybe your karma will even love you for it
—cold pussy
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2009.
I know you mean well, but feeding feral and stray cats exacerbates the problem. The more you feed these unfortunate critters, the more they will reproduce, and the more freezing, starving cats there will be this time next year. Please don’t feed the feral cats, people. It seems harsh, but you’re not doing them any favours in the long run.
Let me guess, it was on hunter street. Lisiten, I love cats but I swear to fuck I want to leave a nice dish of antifreeze out for those sacks of shit.
All I smell in the alley where my car is parked is cat piss from them marking their territory.
This breaks my heart. I live in an area of town where there are a lot of stray cats, and it kills me to think that they’re out in the freezing cold, going hungry. I’ve fed strays, and i wish i could do more than just leave an open can of food on the step and walk away.
Trevor, i hope bugs crawl up your nose and eat you, you idiotic fuck. This is a perfect example of how ignorant and selfish people can be.
sorry to hear about your catpiss ‘hardship’ trevor, i’d hate to be YOU. no really, you suck.
btw, your “i love cats, but… want to feed them antifreeze” is rather telling… you’re either a sociopath or a liar, perhaps both.
EMPATHY & KINDNESS sir… you might want to look into it
I hate to say it, but…
if people would stop feeding the cats, or started feeding them antifreeze, the population of stray and feral cats would start to decline… the number of attacks would go down as well.
But of course, assholes all over the city go to the damned pet store and buy a kitten only to get it home and decide they don’t like litter training it, or it makes too much noise when it goes into heat, or they don’t have time for it, or they can’t afford the vet, or the food, or whatever, and leave it out on the street. SHelters make you donate to have them take in an animal, and rightly so.
People – don’t get a goddamned pet if you’re not willing to keep the damned thing.
And bleeding hearts, stop feeding the feral cats in the city. I KNOW it’s hard, but trust me, having your child mauled by a cat and the aftermath of that is WAY harder.
yeah right, gidget… as we all know, HRM has a ‘big problem’ with hordes of ferocious felines, marauding in the alleyways, wreaking terror on communities and mauling our children.
pfft! get a fuckin grip, this ‘feral cat problem’ is concocted bullshit in the imaginations of uptight lame-ass bitchers like yourself and useless city councillors with nothing better to do with their time.
some of you speak of ‘feral’ as if it were a horrible disease or something. cats, feral especially, help control the rodent population, more than most people realize in fact. they do a thankless public service, so i don’t see the harm in helping out a starving kitty when it’s almost -20 degrees outside.
take your blinders off, think outside of the box… and have a fuckin heart!
I agree with Gidget.. one night 3 winters ago a friend of mine witnessed a man in a taxi cab in Sackville dump a bag of cat food along with 6 cats, some of which were adults, but mostly kittens. I attempted to search for these cats in the woods but they all scattered before I got to them. I have also heard horror stories about people throwing garbage bags with kittens in them over the Macdonald. Yes, there is an abundance of strays in this city, and the problem stems mainly from careless owners and lack of responsibility. A pet is NOT a toy, like many believe in this province.
It’s not that feral cats are “bad”, Pot. It’s that their lives are short and brutal, and invariably end unpleasantly, and it is neither kind nor ethical to make it easier for them to reproduce, thereby increasing the number of suffering animals. Feral cats do play an important part in the urban ecosystem with respect to rodent control. And as with all wild animal populations, the predator/prey relationship finds a balance over time. When well meaning people introduce extra food into the equation, they encourage the predator population to increase beyond the ability of its natural prey to sustain it. Resulting in… MORE starving kitties.
Okay, so there are kind people in the HRM but you are few and far between… people, if you’re going to have a pet, commit to it! Even pretend like you care about them and DON’T let your cats outside. If you think that’s cruel move out of the city to a big acreage without all the dangers city living poses on these creatures, then by all means, let your cat out. If you live in the city fully expect your cat to disappear under a truck or worse, come home damaged because of the idiots who’d harm them and let their own rotten cats out to get into fights and spread disease. It’s pretty simple actually… would you stick your defenseless kids outside each night? No? Well these creatures are like kids who never ever grow up. Treat them as such.
I for one cannot go by a stray and not help or feed it. But hey that is just me 🙂
I for one cannot go by a stray without helping or feeding it – but that is just me
Trevor, where do you live? I’d like to bring you over some some anti-freeze cookies with cat-piss icing you heartless cocksucker.
Feeding the strays really does only exacerbate the problem of there not being enough to go around for the existing cats. A cat can have a lot of kittens in a good year, dozens even. So, by feeding these cats, if they are all actually strays, you are only adding to the senseless suffering of innumerable future generations of their progeny.
All to soothe your poor, simple conscience for the moment.
Good intentions don’t always help. There is a bigger picture than what you see in one glance.
With overpopulation comes disease and famine. Some strays are obviously unavoidable, but maybe some should be rounded up and put down in a more humane way, before they die of starvation, disease, torture, freezing, (or antifreeze poisoning, which I hear is a particularly horrible way to die).
Haha well, if he needs a bug in the nose, you need one in the brain! What the fuck else are we going to do? Are YOU going to round up all these cat’sicles, take them in, feed them. Or round them all up, and bring them to the already over loaded SPCA?
People should have to take a serious I.Q. test for having babies, owning pets, and posting on thecoast.ca