Why do people feed those filthy vermin? There's a scrapyard a few blocks from my house that's chock full of feral cats. Some old lady comes by every morning and night, and dumps a bunch of food for them, so of course they're incredibly overpopulated, along with a ton of coons that eat that cat food too. She also has a couple "houses" made out of scrap wood . Whenever we drive by, the girls love seeing all the kitties, but I always talk to them about why it's wrong to feed them. Today when we were driving past,I noticed a dead raccoon laying in the entrance of one of the hsouses. Of course I had to investigate, and as I walked up to the house, 5-6 cats came pouring out, pushing past the rotting diseased raccoon.
I know this lady means well, but she's going to kill all these cats, dooming them to a miserable painful death of disease , and eventually starvation when she can't feed them anymore and they have nothing to eat. I brought the girls down and had them look, and we had a good long talk about carrying capacity and feeding wildlife.

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If they are just a few blocks away then they are in your yard also.

I'd do something. Cages are my first choice

Feeding the killing machines is only the tip of the iceberg. Lots of do gooders not only feed them, they trap them, take them to the vet and have them spayed/neutered and put them right back out. I have a neighbor that does this. And when coyotes were killing her chickens, she would not allow trapping the coyotes with anything other than a cage trap because of her 20 or so feral cats she had running around might get caught. I told her to enjoy the coyotes but understand that they liked cats as much as they liked chicken.

Wasn't thinking about my response, my apologies.

This^
I fwded this...thanks

I have the same problem. An old lady, now gone, used to feed the cats and let them live under her yard shed. Now another goofball across the street from her puts out food, and they run all over the 'Hood. Just love the hounds going off at 3 am because some of them are yowling and running all over MY yard. Had a couple of Red Fox living around here too, and I had great hopes they might thin them out, but not so much so far! So it's SSS for now.

A friend of mine is in the process of buying a heavily wooded, vacant lot next to hers. Somebody shows up late at night, daily and feeds a bunch of cats and undoubtedly coons and opossums, cat food. They leave the dry cat food bag and a whole bunch of metal cans and never pick them up. My friend is going to sell off about 30 large walnut trees, clear out the brush and put up a 6' privacy fence around the lot to prevent the cats being fed and trash dumping. My friend loves cats, but doesn't want the mess next door that spills onto her land.

Keith

Yep not good for wildlife and birds.

We have idiots around here that feed feral cats. Then complain about the problems they cause.

Neighbor was feeding his cats on his farm and was going through a 5 gallon pail of dry cat food per week. Was so bad that this buffet was drawing in cats from the neighboring farms causing the rodent population to increase significantly. Skunks and raccoons began to hang around his farm causing any number of problems with his chickens. Finally asked me to help out but had to use live traps. 8 skunks,11 raccoons and a large number of cats where removed from his farm in about two weeks. Since then we have decided to cut way back on his feeding so there will be just enough food for the cays to remain hungry enough to hunt keeping the rodent population in check. It was an eye opener for him.

All trappers know that if you want to catch animals,feed them they will come.

I used to work at the casino in Hinckley, and they had a horrible cat problem, no one was feeding them, they would just get into the dumpsters from the various restaurants, they hired a police officer to come out with a silenced 22 and take care of the problem, 400+ cats later and another 60+ live trapped they had it under control, lasted a couple of years and now it looks like they will have it all to do over again, most wouldn’t believe there were that many feral cats there, as you only ever see a couple at any one time, but come a fresh snow and the truth was seen, some of those cat trails looked like cow paths they were so beaten down

I feed feral cats they love dogfood with a squirt of fishoil

When something is available for free, such as food or unrestricted travel and even living accommodations, all sorts of things show up. Even people from foreign countries.

S.S.S.

There’s a group of women around here that collects old coolers and turn them into feral cat houses.

Landowner option makes me no difference their call, if I’m not sure I pass on all of them. Had some guys say it’s a go only to get a call from the wife who had other plans. LOL. I’m not getting in the middle of that no way.