In defense of crazy cat ladies everywhere: why we feed the strays

Today, I enjoyed working in the yard.

For those of you who don’t live in Florida, January is a great time to clean the yard because the snakes aren’t out and it’s usually less than 80 degrees.

It began with piddling. (The traipsing kind of piddling, not the urinating kind of piddling). I was enjoying my three-day weekend and the sunshine. I had just finished mulching the blueberry bushes with pine straw (just in case it ever gets cold enough to hurt them). I was looking around the yard for just any old thing to do.

I found a stinging nettle (thistle) and moseyed to the shed to get the shovel. I dug up the first prickly trespasser and quickly found another. Four nettles later, it dawned on me that the nettles were quite possibly the reason Mason has been licking his paws lately.

Now on a mission, I walked the entire yard in search of anything that could possibly hurt the fur babies. I found some fire ant beds and went inside to get some grits. (They probably don’t work, but my husband believes in them, so I use them anyway. My theory is that it bothers them and they move. His theory is that they eat the grits, the grits expand in their stomachs, and they die.) I sprinkled and sprinkled and then I heard it. The tiniest, most pitiful meow.

I kept sprinkling. No, I told myself. No more kittens.

Before I knew it, the cat was not only in my field of vision–it was walking towards me, meowing the whole way. I looked up with the terrifying thought that all those meows had to be from kittens. I looked over the whole yard quickly. No, those tiny meows were definitely coming from the full-grown cat in front of me. Good. At least there were no kittens.

I tried to ignore her, I really did. (Instinctively, I knew it was a her. Later we checked and confirmed it.) But she was so skinny. And she was begging me for help.

I ran out of grits and went inside to throw the container away. I couldn’t stop myself. I grabbed a spare food bowl (who keeps spare food bowls? Crazy animal people; that’s who) and filled it with Luna’s expensive all natural dye-free cat food. (I buy it from chewy.com: Cat Chow Naturals Indoor.)

Sure enough, the cat was still there when I returned. I fed her and she let me pet her. I took a photo and posted her on Facebook on the off chance that she was someone’s lost pet. It was at that moment that my husband rounded the corner from working in his shed and saw the cat. He smiled and told me that’s the cat he’s been petting and the neighbor sometimes feeds. Of course it is. No way I can just find its home. No, it always has to be an unwanted stray or a feral in my yard. Never a simple lost pet.

Why do I feed the strays? Obviously, partly because I’m a sappy old woman with a soft spot the size of Mars in my otherwise cold, hard heart.

There are other reasons, though. Cats keep mice and snakes out of the yard (and thus out of the house.) A well-fed cat is less likely to contribute the the decline in bird populations. Plus, feeding the strays allows crazy animal people to form a relationship with them and get them proper healthcare. Cats need vaccines, especially if they’re outside interacting with other cats. They also need to be spayed or neutered so that they don’t contribute to the overpopulation problem.

Outdoor cats have an average lifespan of only 2-3 years. In the United States, they have predators like hawks and coyotes. They also frequently get run over and die from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Indoor cats have lifespans of up to 20 years because of the safety of the indoors combined with the effectiveness of veterinary medicine.

So when a stray begs me for help, I feel that I have a moral obligation to help it. Strays did not choose to be abandoned. Ferals did not choose to be born in the wild. Humans have cause their predicament, and it’s up to humans to fix it.

I haven’t decided what to name her yet, but I think I accidentally got a new cat today. I’m blaming Mason. This all started with digging up the nettles because the doofus doesn’t know not to step on them.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

References
https://www.southernliving.com/garden/grumpy-gardener/controlling-fire-ants
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/05/scent-makes-mice-run-scared
https://www.animalwised.com/cats-killing-birds-separating-fact-from-myth-1366.html
https://www.alleycat.org/resources/feral-and-stray-cats-an-important-difference/
https://www.alleycat.org/our-work/trap-neuter-return/

(I am a chewy.com affiliate and will earn money if you buy Luna’s food from them after clicking my link, by the way.)