People call him the crazy cat man.
“I don’t care,” says Pierre Filiatreault, digging into a greasy
Ziploc of boiled and cubed Costco beef. “It won’t stop me from doing my
work.”
Crazy cat man he may be—it’s a by-definition by-gone for a guy who
looks after 40 cats—but Pierre Filiatreault may be the most sensible
voice in feral animal control in HRM.
And in two languages, no less.
“Vient manger? Charlie? Charlie Brown…Charlie…come here…”
Charlie Brown, a burly orange and white tabby who will dance on his
back legs for a treat, had popped out from behind a building when he
heard the engine of Filiatreault’s Blue Ford Ranger XLT.
He was probably waiting for his breakfast. Cats have enviously (and
irritatingly) accurate internal clocks and Filiatreault is there every
weekday at 6:30am to feed the cats their morning meal. On weekends he
sleeps in and arrives at 8. The cats must hate that.
D-2 is next, approaching the now-stopped truck’s open door with a
caution reserved for—and perhaps characteristic of—wild cats.
Out of the truck, there’s a timid flood around 48-year-old
Filiatreault. Or, at least, in a 15-foot radius of the bottom of his
Levis. Weaving, observing, narrow-eyed and always-guarded cats loom.
Captain Binou, Orancina and Trixy arrive—all of the 40 cats here are
three or four years old, most have thick coats and, says Filiatreault,
“some people say they are chubby.”
More felines saunter in, a dozen in total. The Puffy
Brothers—White Puff and Puffy Tail—don’t show today. There are 19
cats in all in the North End Gang, living on the waterfront roughly
around the latitudinal base of Young Street.
Farther south, under a leg of the Macdonald Bridge, is the Catty
Shack Gang—another 11 live in that gentle mob. Other cats, the ones
not accepted in those cliques, live scattershot around the Halifax
Dockyard, a Department of National Defence property that extends from
the Irving Shipyard to the Casino. This is where Filiatreault has
worked since 2005. He’s taken care of the cats, with the blessing of
his bosses, pretty much since he arrived.
And if he didn’t care for the cats? “I’m sure [they] would survive
but”—he shrugs—“they wouldn’t be as healthy-looking. And their
lives? They would probably be two years max. Three years.”
That’s it? That’s why he spends on cats what is, added up, probably
the equivalent of another full-time job?
“I’ve done a lot of things in my life to help people,” he says.
“It’s time to help animals who cannot help themselves.”
The cats all know their own names, but that’s the closest to
domestication most come. A handful gets close enough to Filiatreault
that he can put Revolution—a flea medication—on their necks. But
only three of 40 understand what it means when he flicks a toy on a
string; “Mou-Mou?” Filiatreault says, “It took her two years to learn
to play.” There are shows of affection, though. Or at least gestures of
alpha-cat surrender; they leave Filiatreault mice and rat offerings
once or twice a day.
“If you can gain the trust of a feral animal,” says Filiatreault,
who only has one cat, Zorro, at home, not to mention a very supportive
wife, “that means a lot.”
The Dockyard swallows a huge chunk of prime waterfront real estate
in Halifax, but instead of defining the city by its geographic heft,
the Dockyard’s inaccessibility to average Haligonians makes the base
functionally invisible. It’s like the city ends at Barrington Street,
rather than the water’s edge.
Filiatreault’s cats are almost invisible, too. “Some people say ‘We
have cats in the Dockyard? I have never seen them. And I’ve been here
20 years!'” he says.
And yet, the cats have always been there too, just like similar
colonies lay claim to other parts of the city. “Every neighbourhood has
cat problems,” says Timberlea-Prospect councillor Reg Rankin. “I don’t
think if we reduce the numbers the cats would be greatly offended.”
And the Dockyard, since Filiatreault began his compassionate crusade
four years ago, has seen just that change in its feral cat gangs. There
are fewer joining. And the ones there are healthier.
“All it takes is one female and a couple of males,” Filiatreault
says. “Abandoned by humans. They make their way by eating what they
can. She gets pregnant. Those become feral cats. The males look for
love elsewhere and the population explodes. Halifax is full of them.
Dartmouth is full of them.”
But not the Dockyard. Not anymore.
That’s thanks to Filiatreault, who carves three or four hours out of
every day to run his trap-neuter-release (TNR) program.
It works just like it sounds. Filiatreault sets live traps and
brings the cats to a vet. (He won’t say which one offers the partly
donated services—“he will be flooded with people needing help and
he’s already overworked.”) If they’re in good health Filiatreault’s
society (Pierre’s Alley Cats Society, or PACS) pays to have them spayed
or neutered. After recovery, they go back to their colony.
Pierre Filiatreault’s program works. “I haven’t had kittens in three
years,” he says.
And he wants to expand.
“No meddling with licenses,” he says. “I want [council] to give me
money to sponsor a TNR program for the city.”
And 300,000 people scream: not the cats again.
Roaming cats have been on council’s agenda who-knows-how-many times
in the last who-knows-how-many years.
Cat-talk dominated Halifax Regional Council chambers—and certainly
council media coverage—for a healthy stretch of 2007. A year after
the latest cat debate was put to bed. (The upshot? Cats would
not have to be registered.) Halifax’s mayoral race saw cat-chat
claw to the surface again, symbolizing all that was wrong with council
members and their leader, mayor Peter Kelly. During the October 2008
election, council was criticized as a gaggle of small thinkers in a big
city, who focused on spraying strays when they could have been tackling
crime, transportation and downtown development.
Cats. They’re a real flash point for us.
Eighteen councillors, including the mayor, were voted back to their
seats in October. Mayor Kelly—duly chastised—has since been working
to reign in off-on-a-tangent councillors.
Pam Berman covers municipal affairs for CBC Radio in Halifax. She
says since the election Kelly has been acting like a stronger chair at
council sessions. “He got the sense from the community that enough is
enough. Get a grip on things down there. We don’t want [council]
endlessly talking about inane subjects.”
Councillors took their own warning—can it on the friggin’
cats.
As a result, on the topic of a city-wide TNR program, these days
some councillors resemble Filiatreault’s Dockyard felines. Meowing on
the sidelines but reluctant to engage.
Here’s councillor Reg Rankin, who knows there are problems all over
the city with “cats that don’t have an address”:
“I’m very much in support of the trap-neuter-release program.”
And here’s downtown councillor Dawn Sloane, who’s currently feeding
a large “lackadaisical” unneutered feral feline (her nickname: David
Puddy) who visits her front step:
“I’ve asked for TNR ever since we started talking about the cat
bylaw.”
And, she adds, “I noticed that Jim Smith is now on board.”
Sloane makes mention because north Dartmouth councillor Jim Smith is
known as the anti-cat guy. He was an outspoken supporter of the
struck-down portion of the so-called cat bylaw that would have required
licensing and which gave Animal Control officers the power to trap, and
in some cases euthanize, roaming cats.
But Smith says he’s always been game.
“I’ve brought it up in council a number of times, but no one wants
to put any money on it.”
Maybe that’s because since the cat bylaw kerfuffle “no one wants to
talk about cats,” as councillor Sloane puts it.
But it’s more than that. Despite mayor Kelly’s attempts, keeping
council on point is a bit like, um, herding cats.
“What council is maybe fearful of,” Rankin says, “is that this will
go off in another direction…Are they going to talk about the shelter,
are they going to talk about fines, are they going to talk about cats
at large?”
Smith agrees. “When you bring something forward like this, it gets
bent all out of shape.”
So to do it, Rankin says, “takes a little bit of courage.”
Reg Rankin, who asked city staff for a report on the feasibility of
a city-wide TNR program in the very thick of the cat debate, is the
closest now to dipping in his toes. “If several councillors give me a
call and they are in support, then maybe we can take something concrete
in.”
To Rankin, TNR is common sense. “Government,” he says, “is there to
do the things for people that they are otherwise unable to do.”
Unless, of course, they’re Pierre Filiatreault.
Filiatreault is inside the Catty Shack.
It’s a portable shed—the kind out in the parking lot at the Bayers
Lake Kent. But this one is heated. It never goes below 10 degrees.
“It’s nice,” Filiatreault smiles, “when you park out there and it’s
minus 15. And you see them warm in the window.”
There are sturdy plywood shelves along the interior walls of the
Catty Shack with tidily folded blankets set up as cat beds; there are
bags and cans of food and containers of hand sanitizer. The floors are
swept and disinfected. There are toys and treats, a litter box,
scratching posts—all donated.
“It smells like a cat house,” he apologizes. “Or, a cat
shelter. To me, I’m French, so ‘cat house’ doesn’t mean
anything.” Filiatreault met George Canyon in the autumn at a concert,
“He said, ‘Pierre, what do you do?’ I said, ‘I run a cat house down at
the Dockyard.'” Filiatreault laughs. “He has very good humour. Maybe
he’ll do a benefit concert for a TNR program.”
The cash would be a boon for Filiatreault, who spends not only his
time but his own money on the cats.
In the Catty Shack, Filiatreault stands up to stir scoops of Viralys
L-Lysine powder into a bowl of wet and dry food. The medicine helps
protect the cats from feline herpes, a common upper respiratory virus.
The container costs $97.
Filiatreault keeps his cat resources in the black by getting food
donations and collecting recyclable bottles around the base. He
produced a benefit calendar for 2009 with photos of the cats (and sold
out 700 copies). A little girl he knows got kids to come to her 11th
birthday party last year with gifts for the Catty Shack, instead of
her—food and kitty litter. Pierre’s Alley Cats Society accepts
donations through the Bank of Montreal, but so far, he has only had
two. He also has a small budget from the Department of National
Defence.
“The previous admiral was aware and was very supportive of what I
did,” says Filiatreault, who is a marine engineer and has been in the
navy for 31 years, since he left Montreal as a 17-year-old. “I think if
I had started at the bottom of the chain of command—‘can I have a
shelter?’—it would have been: ‘Are you crazy?'”
“Right now,” he says, “I am stable in the Dockyard and that’s why I
want to reach out and help other people.”
Filiatreault is talking about the other TNR programs he helps
support around Halifax. One example: PACS got $5,000 last year from the
city to run a TNR pilot in Dartmouth.
Councillor Jim Smith remembers the grant. “It was a project on
Myrtle Street. I don’t know how that worked out, but for $5000, you can
only [spay and neuter] 30 or 40 cats.”
And how many feral cats are there in HRM?
If only they had thumbs and could fill in a census.
A 2007 report on TNR programs pegs the number of domesticated, owned
cats in HRM at either 39,000, using a model developed by the city of
Calgary which extrapolates on a cats-per-house formula, or, the report
indicates, there could be a whopping 93,000 cats here, if cat-counters
put faith in a 2005 HRM-commissioned consultant document that relies on
cat-per-person extrapolation.
Superintendent Robin McNeil, who is the go-to cop for animal issues,
was the man on these numbers. In his staff report, he couldn’t
determine which were accurate. Today he suspects, “it’s somewhere in
the middle there.”
Wishful thinking.
“I do have a number for you,” says an expectant Andrea MacDonald,
HRM’s manager of Animal Services.
According to an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted in Halifax in September
2008, which determined the number of cats per household, there are
109,362 cats in Halifax.
Remember, these are owned, domesticated cats, as councillor Rankin
might call them, cats with an address. But the number is
relevant for our discussion here. Based on Robin McNeil’s
research—and MacDonald says it’s likely accurate—the housed cat
population matches the feral and stray numbers cat-for-cat.
McNeil determined TNR surgery and recovery would cost, at minimum,
$300 per cat. That’s 33 million bucks.
Those aren’t all first-year costs, and, heck, maybe the number of
cats isn’t even that high. But there’s no getting around it: $33
million is a terrific figure.
But Filiatreault looks at it this way. Right now most feral cats are
either left to reproduce and die early (which doesn’t cost anything
directly, but compounds the problem) or, they are captured and
euthanized and cremated, which isn’t free.
Trapping is part of the equation either way. Euthanization and
cremation may be less expensive than surgery and recovery, but
ultimately, Filiatreault says, destroying cats doesn’t solve the
problem.
It’s reproduction 101.
In the ’90s at the Dockyard, the feral cat families were rounded up
and exterminated. “But they came back,” he says. “They will always come
back.”
Councillor Jim Smith agrees. “There’s a lot of evidence that [TNR]
works in the long run. If you just take the cats out of their wild
environment, other cats will replace them. So, you do it through
attrition. Spay and neuter them and let them go, and eventually the
colony will shrink in size naturally.”
And so will the cost to the city. And so will the misery of sick,
cold, wet cats. “It’s all politics,” Filiatreault says. “Because it
costs money.”
Petit-Loup pokes a nose into the Catty Shack. Then, deciding it’s
safe, starts to wolf down the medicated food.
Filiatreault will retire from the navy in June. Then, he says, “I’ll
have nothing else to do but play with the cats.”
Or, maybe, run the city’s TNR program.
People who want to help towards the upkeep of the Catty Shack and Pierre Filiatreault’s work with the care can make a donation to the Bank of Montreal under the name P.A.C.S. ( Pierre’s Alley Cats Society)
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This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.
I hope a TNR program gains some traction. When the “big” cat debate was on I wrote to several councillors supporting TNR. It has worked well in other urban centres that have adopted the approach.
The other component of a success TNR program is offering a rebate to all pet owners who take their animals to be altered. The key is making the rebate available immediately at the cash. Once a week (or month) the vet office files their rebates with city hall and gets reimbursed rather than individuals being tasked with mailing in forms and “proof of” info. Less paperwork for city hall and more incentive for the pet-owning populace.
So why the domesticated cat component? Simply this, knocked up “cats with homes” often get abandoned and simply add to the feral cat population. It’s far cheaper to rebate one cat’s alteration than to TNR the 2-12 babies a female can have every year (plus her babies are having babies every year, too).
This is a great story … I’m going to send it my councillor, Sue Uteck, and ask her where she stands with feral cats. After all she has a colony in her district at Point Pleasant Park. Thanks for the very informative article.
Pierre is my hero. I love you !
I wish more people were kind hearted like you. The world would be a much nicer place. 🙂
Geese, I start reading this like I do all news stories… read the first few paragraphs to get the general gist of the article before deciding to cozy in for the goddam novella or, alternatively, decide to move on…. in the first few paragraphs very little information is provided about this article and none of it eludes to the punchline, the point… the thing that makes it news… reference the headline even!
All I wanted to know was what the fix was… instead I can name the felines, describe them and tell you what kind of truck this guy drives and now I don’t give a fuck how he’s “fixed anything”.
Time to hire an editor. A real one.
I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I understand the logic in the last few paragraphs. So neutering/spaying the cats, as opposed to killing them, will ensure that their ‘ecological niche’ remains filled, preventing new cats from moving in? And what happens when the sterile cats eventually, die, and more cats move in? You neuter/spay them, etc…?
Fair enough. But how exactly is that a different scenario from simply killing them, besides being more expensive (and perhaps less cruel)? And are we supposing that the supply of ‘other cats’ is somehow dependent on the supply of available ecological niches? That is, if you exterminate the cat population, the source of ‘other cats’ will suddenly become more fecund?
I don’t buy it. The ‘other cat’ supply, if it isn’t the feral population, is simply abandoned cats. The solutions then are shelters for unwanted animals and neutering/spaying domestic pets. Whether you kill or sterilize the feral population has nothing to do with it. Either way, the animals won’t reproduce. It’s simply a matter of choosing between an expensive program that requires us to live with feral animals for awhile, and an inexpensive one that some people will see as barbaric, and that some won’t.
As a side note, based on the cat populations that I’ve seen in other cities, I think Halifax is way below it’s feral cat carrying capacity — plenty of unfilled ecological niches out there.
I still don’t know what the ‘answer’ to the cat problem is, I get a couple sentences in and my eyes start to glaze over and I’m on to something else. Holy crap, give us the 5-w’s in the first paragraph or something. This isn’t The New Yorker, its The fucking Coast
Dear “MattAbroad”,
Maybe your parents should had been “TNR” before you were borne!!!
The issue is that if the city implements a TNR program then people who own cats will stop getting them fixed. You have to remember that once the government starts to do something for strays, people will then feel entitled to the same service free of charge. Once the government starts taking care of something that is a nuisance, people will begin to threaten to worsen the nuisance if they don’t benefit from the government program. It is the chicken and the egg conundrum.
The idea of a rebate is simply adding to the governmental responsibility. The problem, more than anything, is irresponsible pet owners. If you want to buy a pet, it means paying for medical costs. And while spaying or neutering your pet may SEEM like a voluntary and unnecessary expense in the short-term, the long-term benefit (not seeing animals murdered, abandoned, or maintained in dangerous and unhealthy conditions) to taking on the responsibility is massive. But, again, if people see strays being “fixed” for free then they will insist that someone do it for them as well.
The thing is, fixing strays will see the feral animal (which is not limited only to cats, I might add) population drop to virtually zero and then the spending will ultimately be reduced to the same virtually imperceptible amount. Pet owners need to accept responsibility for their animals. Dogs, cats, rodents, reptiles and fish need more than just food. They need care. They need exercise. They need medical services. They need shelter and attention. If you want to own a pet, you can’t assume that five minutes of yarn play or tossing a ball once or twice is enough. You have to get out there. You have to shut off the television. A pet ISN’T a child, but much of the same responsibility applies. Don’t become a pet owner if you don’t want to share your life. Because that is what you are doing. A pet isn’t like a video game. You can’t turn it on when you want amusement and turn it off when you don’t.
As for TNR versus euthanasia, it is an issue of a humane solution versus a non-humane. I can see the benefits of both, to be honest, but humane will always win out in the long run, in my humble opinion. The ecological niche consideration is one that needs more support as far as I’m concerned. Granted, cats kill rodents. But so do birds. So does poison. And we would never win on a TNR program for the city’s rodent concerns.
As for the style of The Coast’s stories…the point of them is to humanize the story. And The Coast’s writers do that. There will always be detractors who want the facts. The Coast said this in its story: “There are lots of stray cats. One option is to kill them all. Another is to implement a trap-neuter-release program. Some like one idea. Others like another. Some people try to care for the cats. Some don’t.” But if that was ALL they said then you would have no idea who said what, which government agents support one versus the other, and how some people are willing to donate time, effort, and money in the interim. I prefer the way the story was told to the cold, hard facts. Get over yourself. Get over your instant gratification mindset. You’re just being lazy. Get informed. This is just more evidence of why people don’t vote. Seriously.
You can inform people, make a good story of it AND relate can’t. But yeah, its the ‘readers fault’.
See? Gibberish. ha ha.
It’s a good story, and in all honesty, given how much the Herald and Metro dilute the landscape with wire service stories and fluff, this is an actual story that faces the city. I think the TNR program is fantastic, but what I find really odd is that a councilor (Reg Rankin) that hails from the suburbs is spearheading the project. Timberlea-Prospect doesn’t exactly have a feral cat problem.
Tried to make a donation at a Bank of Montreal branch in dartmouth on Tuesday but they didn’t know anything about this cat charity-so couldn’t
Want to make a donation-how can I do that?
marcella
Tried to make a donation at a Bank of Montreal branch in dartmouth on Tuesday but they didn’t know anything about this cat charity-so couldn’t
Want to make a donation-how can I do that?
marcella
HRM does NOT have a fucking ‘cat problem’!!!
WHO the hell is making up this crap up anyway???
so what, there’s some homeless/feral cats running around, big f’ng deal! *every* city has cats that have strayed too far away from home and gotten lost OR abandoned by their irresponsible owners (cruel bastards who should be flogged mercilessly, preferably in full view of the public, and administered by SPCA volunteers).
however, the cats are *not bothering anyone*. nobody that i know of in this city has ever had an ‘actual problem’ with stray or feral cats – aside from the sensationalist propaganda & bullshit that we hear (constantly) from *certain* city council members with self-serving, twisted agendas and an axe to grind (and YOU know who you are, assholes).
thing is, those cats that are able to adapt (and yes, sadly, some don’t) resort to their feline instincts and are forced to hunt to *survive*. yeah, it’s a hard life, and it would suck to be stuck outside in the freezing cold, having to hunt for your dinner (or beg for food from kind strangers) – BUT, unless the kitties are *suffering* from injury or disease, then we have NO right whatsoever to arbitrarily end their lives. there is simply no need to ‘cull’ the cat population, as some knee-jerk, blood-thirsty boneheads have proposed. besides, feral cats DO help to keep the rodent population in-check, and for the most part, they stay out of sight and don’t bother anyone. as Filiatreault rightly points out, the feral cats are practically “invisible” – in other words – there is NO cat problem!
now, what our city DOES have a problem with is utter INEPTITUDE & STUPIDITY on the part our city councillors and some HRM staff (ok not all, but there are a few bad apples that have spoiled the barrel).
maybe we should have a cull on the idiots who ‘work’ for HRM?? or at the very least, a trap-neuter-release program (to prevent their stupid progeny from also being hired-on by the city)!
I thought this was a very good story. Props to Lezlie on this 🙂
What are we going to do about feral public servants who need to be neutered?
People who own cats should have to pay licensing fees the same as people who own dogs do. Cats take up time and resources which cost money to the municipality. Why are cat owners getting off scot free?
Feral dog populations would be put down, quick enough. So should the feral cats. Or is some bleeding heart going to wait until they attack a small child, or kill a small and beloved pet? Feral means WILD, people. Wild animal behaviour cannot be predicted.
Plus I think it’s cruel to leave cats outside where they get lice, fleas, parasites and frostbite in the winter. Crazy that someone would even think that’s a humane solution.
Bottom line – cat OWNERS need to be more responsible then they historically have been and perhaps a licensing fee would be step one.
Smarten up.
ps to previous
the other problem with feral cats is that they mingle with cats owned by responsible owners and share their diseases with them.
That’s not fair to the responsible pet owners.
ps to previous
Feral cats mingle with animals owned by responsible pet owners (or just leave their crap on the lawn and leave), either way, they share diseases with animals who have homes.
This is unfair to both the owned animals and the responsible owners.
common sense, judging by your comments, you do not have experience with feral cats and you didn’t bother to read this article in its entirety.
First of all, feral cats will not attack anyone, unless they’re cornered, have no means of escape and see no alternative. It’s extremely difficult if not impossible to get close enough to a feral cat in order to corner them. Feral cats do not go looking for children or pets to attack, so to suggest they would attack a small child or kill a small and beloved pet is ridiculous. This is real life, not Monty Python with bunnies going for the throat.
If you had read the article, you would see that your solution of simply rounding up the feral cats and killing them has never worked – the feral cats at the Dockyards were rounded up and exterminated but it didn’t solve the problem. If you remove all feral cats from an area, feral cats from another area will move in. Rounding them up and killing them is a short-term solution. We need to expand our minds and consider long-term solutions.
Again, if you’d bothered to read the article in its entirety you would have seen that nobody is suggesting we should just neuter them and turn them loose back on the streets. Many of these cats would be set up in a colony supervised by humans.
As for your comment that feral cats mingle with cats of responsible owners, so-called responsible owners do not let their pets wander, and if they do let their cats wander, they would at least ensure the cat has its vaccinations.
What are we going to do about feral public servants who need to be euthanized?
@ commonsense– I agree with you completely. There is no logical reason why cats cannot be leashed and kept on their own property, like dogs. It’s annoying and unfair to people to have their cars pissed on and scratched, with muddy pawprints all up the window, gardens dug up and shit in, and listening to them hollering and screaming in fights underneath their window at 3am. They are destructive, noisy and annoying. Be a responsible pet owner that you should be and keep your pets on your own property. I have never understood why there are no laws for cats. And the feral ones? Even worse…the whole works of them should be done away with. The way I see it, if you are going to open your door and let your cat run free, you deserve whatever you get.
There is a problem and everyone recognizes the fact. Now if everyone would just agree to a solution. I think the man in this story (Pierre Filiatreault) is a hero to all cat lovers. He takes alot of his time and puts it into helping animals that his fellow man has forsaken. He has seen what works and what doesn’t for right now and for the animals themselves. In the long term I don’t know what could be done. Anyone can get a cat. Nobody asks for references when they have kittens. They are only to happy to send off kittens so they themselves are not footing bills. Vets ask for about $300.00 dollars to fix one female cat. Now Vets are asking for addional fees if your female has either A. gone into heat even once. or B. had a litter of kittens siting that now the uterus is larger and the surgery more involved. Cash grab or truth? You tell me. So far I have taken in 11 cats that were strays. Either keeping them because I wanted to or because I couldn’t find homes for them. None of them are outdoor cats. I personally don’t think cats should run free and cats were domesticated long before dogs were. Either way. You yourself may not feel you are responsible for that cat down the street going garbage can to garbage can trying to survive. And as long as you continue to feel that way. The problem will never be solved. We don’t have perfect neighbors nor is anyone on this planet perfect. However you could be a small part of the solution. When you add up all the small pieces you can get a big portion. Simple math there. None of those cats asked to be taken in and thrown away like a disposeable razor. When the cute factor wears off and they start to act like adults by spraying, fighting, and cauterwauling. The owner without the $300.00 plus dollars that has that kitten now cat … opens the door and puts a foot to their arse and off they go. Whether people had the money when they got the kitten and due to life now don’t or never had it to begin with. The simple fact is we all know the birds and the bees. One male, one female and the problem gets bigger in 3 months and then 6months after that it is bigger again and it only gets worse. You can’t curse the problem away. You can’t tell everyone off and make it go away. You want the problem to dissappear. You are going to have to stick out your neck and do atleast something to be a part of a solution. Or shut up and let those willing to try, TRY!! I am tired of listening to the mouths go on and on about your gardens… your yards.. smelling cat urine and cleaning up feces. BOO HOO!! Be glad you are not the cat looking at a miserable life you never asked for or a quick end you sure as heck don’t look forward too!!