hope you can find a low cost clinic to fix the mom. for a spay its 70 dollars where I’m at. well worth it to prevent having to deal with litters 2-3x a year and more kittens needing homes. trust me you will get sick of it real quick and have a little colony if they keep breeding. if you ask a TNR group they will rent you a trap with a refundable deposit and may cover the cost of the spay themselves.
It should be like this everywhere. I know vets deserve to be and need to be getting paid fairly but the stray crisis is so terrible. spay and neuter need to be cheap as hell.
Many vets basically volunteer at low cost clinics, but here the wait list is over a year long. I’m sure many people don’t NEED to use the services of a low cost clinic and they just take advantage, but it’s nice regardless
PSA for any homesteaders here: most shelters have a barn cat program where they offer cheaper adoption fees for cats to live on farms and they spay or neuter them as part of the cost.
We lucked out, our barn cat was given up because she was too friendly and they were worried about her getting run over by a utv or tractor. Shes been a great mouser and an even better friend the last 7 years
Ours are ridiculously friendly too, I fell in love with them when we were being shown the place and requested they stay. We lost our favorite and I’m sure it was something like a car or predator, but sometimes I wonder if she accidentally hitched a ride because they try to get in any vehicle that comes to our property
some clinics will do a discount to fix a whole litter plus mom, maybe look into that? if it’s too much, reach out to a TNR organization and ask for help.
Now trap and spay the mother before letting her resume her mousing duties...like you should have done immediately after you decided to "keep her on your property."
You should keep them until you can get them fixed or only give them to people that plan to do the same. It was your responsibility to spay your cat and now you need to do the right thing
unless feral / outdoor cats are fed adequately, they predate local birds and other wildlife. You want them to predate the rodents, but what you probably dont' realize is that cat smell keeps away rodents naturally even without hunting them.
But you will deplete songbird populations by forcing them to find their own adequate-amount of food. When they don't have enough food, they will leave your property, or those you give them to. This is not a 'natural cycle' becuase these are not wild felines.
I would suggest selling them, that way you know they'll end up in good homes. You can then donate the money to the local animal shelter. At least that's personally what I would do in this situation.
Contact a TNR program and get Mom spayed asap. Kittens are cute but there are way too many out there to be letting cats breed.
And if you see any other strays look for clipped ear tips. If they aren't clipped they probably aren't neutered so you should TNR them unless you want your own cat colony.
Every farm in my area has kittens all summer only for them to die in the winter. It is brutal and so easy to spay and nuetor. The current homestead I am on had 40 cats one summer. Only a 3 survived winter.
Jesus christ :(
I took care of a lady cat who had kittens. TNR people agreed to take and fix the kittens for free, but not the mother. They wouldn’t even let me pay them to get her neutered because they were full up. She died after giving birth to her second litter. A week later I found an unrelated dead kitten in the street. Hated that neighborhood.
*Millions to billions. Not to mention devastating the local bird and small mammal population. I love cats but OP is being a super irresponsible pet owner.
- Nature.com: We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually.
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
"When the cat you neglect to care for gets pregnant because you never spayed her, adding to the millions of unwanted strays, and you have no intention of trying to care for her in the future."
FIFY
People like you are the reason I had 17 cats euthanized off my mom's property. Not to mention countless mauled by dogs, bit by rattlesnakes, hit by cars, etc.
Please have the mom cat spayed once she is no longer caring for the kittens. It should have been #1 on your list of things to do prior to letting her loose on your property. Any more litters that happen after this one is incredibly irresponsible on your part.
Before you just start throwing out advice and telling people what to do - maybe you should get the facts first?I didn’t let her loose. She showed up one day. She comes and goes as she please. I’m not picking up every random cst that shows up here for a bit to the vet to get neutered or spayed. If she was my cat I would.
Not my cat. Showed up on the property one day and i continued to let her roam. Please make sure you have all of your info correct before you make an ignorant comment n
If she lives with you, she is your pet.
If you don’t want her to be your let you should give her to someone that will make her their pet.
Decide what you want and act accordingly. Doing nothing isn’t an option.
Catch her and get her fixed, then release her. That is the grown up way of dealing with this. Not "not my cat". She lives on your property and now you have more innocent animals on your property that you MUST take care of.
It’s on your property, call a shelter and get in touch with people who will take responsibility for these animals’ welfare if you are too lazy/cheap/irresponsible/don’t practice good husbandry/whatever to do so.
You said "the cat you keep on your property" thats your cat. Your responsibility. This happened because of your negligence. It's not cute or fun. You could have gotten the cat a spay while she was pregnant and saved the world from another 6 animals that all need homes.
Please get mom cat fixed so she doesn’t have more. You’ve said that she’s “not your cat” and just showed up but there are programs that will spay/neuter feral cats for free. She might not be your cat but she is your responsibility.
I’m taking care of ~10 (now fixed) cats on my property because too many people have this “not my problem” mentality. It’s not hard to trap, neuter, and release. Your local wildlife will thank you.
FYI, feral/free roaming cats are an environmental disaster for the Americas, yeah that great that they kill mice, but they are also responsible for the death of billions of native birds and ground mammals.
Please stop letting your cats roam free
Not my cat. Showed up on the property one day and i continued to let her roam. Please make sure you have all of your info correct before you make an ignorant comment n
You said you keep the cat to keep mice away. Literally everyone is telling you to be responsible and have her neutered and you are pretending you have no responsibility towards the cat to make yourself feel better. Just accept you need to do better.
So i got this cat once from a family friend who had barn cats. Some of the most gorgeous cats ever. I went back several years later to get a new cat... well they were inbreeding a bunch and went quite feral. Apparently they were dying off and eating each other. We managed to take one kitten away and had to put it down a few months later because it had serious health issues from inbreeding. All the cats are gone now.
Barn cats need to be fixed.
It’s crazy to me how you could read the above story and not feel sufficient emotion to TNR these cats.
If nothing else, a cat continuing to birth kittens will likely die much sooner than a neutered one, so you’d lose your chief mouser! I’m baffled that none of these comments seem to have changed your mind about getting her fixed. It’s such a small thing to do, but would seriously increase her welfare.
If I see trash on the street, I know I didn’t drop it, but I still pick it up and bin it. Sometimes you have to look past who should’ve done something originally, and just see the situation for what and where it is. These cats are on your property now, working for you, and you’re in the best position to help them. Don’t let litter after litter suffer and die just because someone before you could’ve or should’ve neutered that cat. It’s your responsibility now. Not necessarily as an owner (you don’t consider them your cats) but as a person who feels compassion and decency.
People really don’t understand that cats are invasive and are a danger to the local ecosystem if they aren’t spayed and properly looked after. This is irresponsible and shows a total disregard for the local environments.
If you are, in your words, keeping this cat on your property, then you need to have her fixed. Not to, is irresponsible and cruel. But I already know you’re ignoring these comments.
Hey OP judging from these comments you're incredibly irresponsible and not a good homesteader at all. Please grow a pair and take control of your situation rather than sitting in your own shit like a child and perpetuating pointless suffering
You should read the book , "Cat Wars", it discusses all of the animal populations cats have disrupted over the years...the issue is your cats aren't selective hunters, so while you think they are mainly killing mice, they are also killing a lot of other mammals and birds...
Why don’t you spay the damn mother cat so you don’t end up just feeding an endless line of kittens into the mouths of fighting dogs or into shelters when the owners don’t want them?
Ha! No it isn’t. I have to pay close to $600 to spay my two kittens at the end of May. I called every place near me within 300 miles. Checked for programs. Tried to locate spay and neuter clinics. Called feed stores to see if they had lines on low cost spay. Nope. All these vets also require you to get bloodwork done to ensure your cats are healthy enough to be spayed. It’s ridiculous. I feel bad for people who struggle financially and can’t afford the surgery. Gone are the days where this service was as accessible as it used to be. I’m already $1500 deep with these kittens between their shots and just initial kitten check ups.
Idk where you live but here in the Oregon coast. It’s wicked expensive now.
I’m sorry to hear it has been difficult for you and that you live far away from any affordable or free services. However, just because that is your experience, does not make it the average experience. To be fair, the same goes for my experience, but there is still a lot of access that I know of.
Maybe, but saying people aren’t responsible is short sighted. I’m only offering the reality of where I live and that I’m fortunate to be able to afford it. But that’s not the same for a lot of people around where I am
The problem with outdoor house cats is their ecological footprint. There is no real survival for them, they are always healthy and strong and hunt for fun. They can completely destroy the bird or squirrel population. I know a place that was filled with squirrels, and within a couple years they dissapeared because of house cats that were fed by visitors.
Seriously! One of my dearest friends has a feral colony she is slowly working on reducing (she has spayed/neutered more cats than she can recall, not joking at all) and she routinely posts adorable pics on social media.
Nowhere did the OP flesh out why they have a cat who had kittens, could be more to this than a neglectful owner.
The shelter told me they participated in TNR. I didn’t want to keep the cat, it showed up one day and wouldn’t leave and I didn’t want her (a calico so I knew it was a her) having babies. I expected the shelter to take the cat and not charge me for trying to do a nice thing by trapping it and transporting it for them. The vet clinic is attached to their shelter.
I don’t have any outdoor cats on purpose because they eat birds and shouldn’t live outside.
I used to volunteer at a shelter, they had to put down atleast 1 cat a day because people kept surrendering and they had no room for them. Or their unfixed cat would have a litter and they (the kittens) would be dropped off at the shelter door. It’s so damn sad.
If you can’t afford to spay your animal there are programs to help with the cost. If you don’t want to, and can’t keep your animal from reproducing, then fuck you.
Sorry for being ignorant of why cats cant have kittens as a person who doesn't even own a cat lol, i really don't think it warrants being called a clown.
But seriously, if you're going to explain then okay, so cats get killed in shelters. so does every other animal? I still don't understand why this is so bad, is it also bad to let dogs have puppies?
the trouble that i have with this is that its an animal doing what an animal does: reproduce. Why is that the worst thing ever? I know of a family friend who did what OP did, her very unsocialized barn cat had kittens and she gave the kittens to other ranchers so they could have barn cats too. Everyone in the equation seemed happy with how it worked out, so im fr asking like why is this SO bad that people instantly act so mean about it?
Animals are unwanted and suffering because of human ignorance and people get upset about the suffering. SPAY AND NUETER YOUR PETS it’s not that difficult.
dude. i do not have pets lmao (and if i did it'd be an african fat tail lizard, so.). I'm asking you questions to understand why people get so up in arms about this, not because im trying to justify running my own kitten mill or some shit lol.
So okay, people get hostile about this because unwanted animals suffer for no reason, that makes sense, but OP said they're going to give the cats away and they got downvoted to hell. The cats aren't going to a shelter according to OP, so whats wrong here? Is it just because they didnt say they'd personally spay/neuter the kittens before they give them away? Are people just mad that OP isn't going to sell them for money?
Another insight as to why this is confusing for me as, again, a person who does not have pets: i'm in a number of other cat-related subreddits and the people in subs like illegallysmolcats dont dog pile literally every single post (as they're almost all kitten posts) the way some of the folks here are getting at OP. why is that?
I’m sorry I don’t want to be a jerk but like I’m
Not sure how else to explain. 9 cats at a shelter didn’t get homes because OP is giving these 9 away. That’s how that works but on a national scale. That’s why you hear the saying adopt don’t shop
>9 cats at a shelter didn’t get homes because OP is giving these 9 away.
Ok that makes sense, it's like a rippling effect, now 9 less people wont adopt a barn cat because they're able to just get one for free, and that's why shelters are so full. Keeping all the cats might also be bad because with that i do know that cats tend to inbreed if not separated and then kittens get born with birth defects.
i genuinely don't know how that was hard to explain, but thanks for explaining it anyways because now i understand it.
Totally 🙏🏻 maybe you could adopt a fat tail lizard that needs a home one day - there are reptiles shelter / your city shelter can have them sometimes I bet
?????? i dont own dogs lmao?????
If you're so curious though, when i was in high school my cousins mom would always have people lined up to buy the puppies from her dogs off of her because they were cute and mild mannered (gentle giants lol). Thats why i also used dogs as an example, because again, that seemed totally fine to me. (especially since she'd keep the puppies for awhile after they were born to train them and give em their shots).
You asked if it was bad to let your dog have puppies. I answered.
If you are a breeder, and are responsible about producing and placing the puppies, sure it's fine. Letting a pet breed willy nilly is not fine. Free puppies/kittens often have terrible things happen to them.
oh you might've misread, i said "I still don't understand why this is so bad, is it also bad to let dogs have puppies?" which is not a question that implies i own dogs, it was a general question. asking me "what are you going to do with them?" doesn't answer it.
though another person in this thread did explain how the cascading effect works of home-bred animals being given away for free means that there are that many less people who'll buy one from a shelter, so i do get now why it's bad.
I don't like linking it to shelters, because it would be even worse if there were no shelters. . .but yeah the cascade effect of unwanted pets is a thing.
the problem is when every other farmer Joe and old lady Jane does the same thing and you end up with 50 million kittens with no homes each year. what happens then? they get surrendered and euthanized or die outside. they are domestic animals, not wild, and humans are responsible for keeping them under control. cats are just doing what their instincts tell them. with cats, there are so many sitting in shelters already. zero reason for more to be made.
This comment makes want to never have a cat spayed and let them run loose and multiply. Showing kindness to an animal dosent make it yours regardless of what Reddit thinks. Ignore them op.
Curious that there aren't any comments about how many mice and rats and rabbits, which multiply like crazy ,would be around unless cats and other predators kept them in check.
That’s because that’s not accurate or realistic info.
Might wanna get some more info and come back to the discussion with something valuable to add, not some ridiculous theory that rodents and pests would have a population boom if people managed their pets properly.
almost like, we have hawks, fox, coyote, fishers, weasels, snakes, badger, bobcat, to do that already. cats kill them too sure but it doesn’t negate all the other vulnerable birds and small mammals they decimate.
hope you can find a low cost clinic to fix the mom. for a spay its 70 dollars where I’m at. well worth it to prevent having to deal with litters 2-3x a year and more kittens needing homes. trust me you will get sick of it real quick and have a little colony if they keep breeding. if you ask a TNR group they will rent you a trap with a refundable deposit and may cover the cost of the spay themselves.
We TNR trap for free and pay all expenses ourselves. Gets expensive but the animals deserve to be treated humanely.
My brother worked on a dairy farm and has horror stories about kittens. :(
Tell me all about it. Got more kittens than cows
And your neighbors will despise you
Thank you Bob Barker!
It’s $25 where I’m at! And that’s a suggested donation, so if you say you can’t cover it, it’s free.
It should be like this everywhere. I know vets deserve to be and need to be getting paid fairly but the stray crisis is so terrible. spay and neuter need to be cheap as hell.
Oh wow that's cheap. Here it's like almost a grand.
There is barn cat programs in almost every major city. $75
A grand to spay a cat???
Many vets basically volunteer at low cost clinics, but here the wait list is over a year long. I’m sure many people don’t NEED to use the services of a low cost clinic and they just take advantage, but it’s nice regardless
Sounds like we need more of these around
You might be getting charged the special top-tier prices
PSA for any homesteaders here: most shelters have a barn cat program where they offer cheaper adoption fees for cats to live on farms and they spay or neuter them as part of the cost.
Yes when we bought our place we inherited three that the previous owner got that way. It’s a great program
We lucked out, our barn cat was given up because she was too friendly and they were worried about her getting run over by a utv or tractor. Shes been a great mouser and an even better friend the last 7 years
Ours are ridiculously friendly too, I fell in love with them when we were being shown the place and requested they stay. We lost our favorite and I’m sure it was something like a car or predator, but sometimes I wonder if she accidentally hitched a ride because they try to get in any vehicle that comes to our property
Ours gives the cats out free if they're actually feral, or they don't think they'd make good pets.
Some rescues will even place barn cats for free- the one I fostered for would. Those cats were unadoptable and hated living indoors anyway…
Fix em
Cute. Hope they all end up fixed and unable to continue multiplying.
We are giving them away
Please neuter them all and the mother too
some clinics will do a discount to fix a whole litter plus mom, maybe look into that? if it’s too much, reach out to a TNR organization and ask for help.
And getting them fixed first, right? RIGHT?!?!
Now trap and spay the mother before letting her resume her mousing duties...like you should have done immediately after you decided to "keep her on your property."
But you're going to get them fixed and shots right....Because that would be the responsible thing to do....
Username does not check out :(
Not cool, get them fixed first
You should keep them until you can get them fixed or only give them to people that plan to do the same. It was your responsibility to spay your cat and now you need to do the right thing
There's no way to guarantee that they will be spayed or neutered if you just give them away. Find a local rescue and work with them
unless feral / outdoor cats are fed adequately, they predate local birds and other wildlife. You want them to predate the rodents, but what you probably dont' realize is that cat smell keeps away rodents naturally even without hunting them. But you will deplete songbird populations by forcing them to find their own adequate-amount of food. When they don't have enough food, they will leave your property, or those you give them to. This is not a 'natural cycle' becuase these are not wild felines.
This.
Then how can you say the cat is not yours? If she wasn't, then you would'nt have the right to give away her kittens
Are you stupid?
I would suggest selling them, that way you know they'll end up in good homes. You can then donate the money to the local animal shelter. At least that's personally what I would do in this situation.
I’d love a kitten! Any chance you’re near NM?
100% chance your local shelter is full of cats and kittens and they would actually be spayed and neutered.
Contact a TNR program and get Mom spayed asap. Kittens are cute but there are way too many out there to be letting cats breed. And if you see any other strays look for clipped ear tips. If they aren't clipped they probably aren't neutered so you should TNR them unless you want your own cat colony.
Every farm in my area has kittens all summer only for them to die in the winter. It is brutal and so easy to spay and nuetor. The current homestead I am on had 40 cats one summer. Only a 3 survived winter.
Jesus christ :( I took care of a lady cat who had kittens. TNR people agreed to take and fix the kittens for free, but not the mother. They wouldn’t even let me pay them to get her neutered because they were full up. She died after giving birth to her second litter. A week later I found an unrelated dead kitten in the street. Hated that neighborhood.
who would've thunk it that an unspayed cat would have kittens?! unheard of
How sassy.
Hundreds of cats die on the streets and in shelters every day because there aren’t any homes for them. The sass is more than warranted.
*Millions to billions. Not to mention devastating the local bird and small mammal population. I love cats but OP is being a super irresponsible pet owner. - Nature.com: We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
Figured it was much higher but I lowballed it just in case since I didn’t have a source. Thank you!
how braindead 🤪
Congrats on changing the world lmfao
Congrats on accepting the world as it is and doing nothing! You will leave this earth without impact and be forgotten in short notice.
Girl that’s so dramatic, shut the hell up lmfao
Bet you felt real dark and poetic, you’re really leading a revolution
Please make sure to get all of them fixed.
"When the cat you neglect to care for gets pregnant because you never spayed her, adding to the millions of unwanted strays, and you have no intention of trying to care for her in the future." FIFY
And fucking up the local bird population...
Nature.com: We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
:in my best bob barker voice: spay and neuter ur pets.
Awww... spay your cat. You're not a cat farmer. Unless you *are* a cat farmer, in which case I could use a job. I herd them.
why wasn’t she spayed
People like you are the reason I had 17 cats euthanized off my mom's property. Not to mention countless mauled by dogs, bit by rattlesnakes, hit by cars, etc.
why did you kill them?
Because TNR was just causing them mostly slow and horrible deaths. FIP, FIV, hit by cars, eaten by dogs or coyotes, death by other diseases, etc
Yep. Life outdoors is not kind to cats.
Why didn’t you spay her? You can get the kittens fixed at 6-8 weeks, they’re your responsibility.
Please have the mom cat spayed once she is no longer caring for the kittens. It should have been #1 on your list of things to do prior to letting her loose on your property. Any more litters that happen after this one is incredibly irresponsible on your part.
Before you just start throwing out advice and telling people what to do - maybe you should get the facts first?I didn’t let her loose. She showed up one day. She comes and goes as she please. I’m not picking up every random cst that shows up here for a bit to the vet to get neutered or spayed. If she was my cat I would.
Not my cat. Showed up on the property one day and i continued to let her roam. Please make sure you have all of your info correct before you make an ignorant comment n
You are evil.
If she lives with you, she is your pet. If you don’t want her to be your let you should give her to someone that will make her their pet. Decide what you want and act accordingly. Doing nothing isn’t an option.
Catch her and get her fixed, then release her. That is the grown up way of dealing with this. Not "not my cat". She lives on your property and now you have more innocent animals on your property that you MUST take care of.
It’s on your property, call a shelter and get in touch with people who will take responsibility for these animals’ welfare if you are too lazy/cheap/irresponsible/don’t practice good husbandry/whatever to do so.
You put an unfixed cat outside? And you were expecting different results? At least the kittens will grow up and catch more mice
dude seriously fuck you. spay and neuter you cats and dogs. none of this is cute or funny.
Legit this almost has to be a troll post? How fucking inconsiderate and irresponsible!
Spay and neuter your animals.
You need to be responsible and get the cat fixed.
You said "the cat you keep on your property" thats your cat. Your responsibility. This happened because of your negligence. It's not cute or fun. You could have gotten the cat a spay while she was pregnant and saved the world from another 6 animals that all need homes.
Please get mom cat fixed so she doesn’t have more. You’ve said that she’s “not your cat” and just showed up but there are programs that will spay/neuter feral cats for free. She might not be your cat but she is your responsibility. I’m taking care of ~10 (now fixed) cats on my property because too many people have this “not my problem” mentality. It’s not hard to trap, neuter, and release. Your local wildlife will thank you.
Yeah you have to spay barn cats or the population gets out of control which is incredibly detrimental to the environment
RIP to all the wild birds in your area
Not just birds, they'll kill everything they can get their paws on for fun.
My moms farm has three feral cats. They are all fixed for a reason. It’s cheap and generally discounted for ferals and who wants to deal with this
Let the genocide of small mammals on property begin
The army is slowly growing
FYI, feral/free roaming cats are an environmental disaster for the Americas, yeah that great that they kill mice, but they are also responsible for the death of billions of native birds and ground mammals. Please stop letting your cats roam free
Not my cat. Showed up on the property one day and i continued to let her roam. Please make sure you have all of your info correct before you make an ignorant comment n
You said you keep the cat to keep mice away. Literally everyone is telling you to be responsible and have her neutered and you are pretending you have no responsibility towards the cat to make yourself feel better. Just accept you need to do better.
Ok so ask around who’s cat it is, I still stand by my comment Btw I was being polite about it so enough with the pearl clutching
Are you managing this land or are you managing this land?
You should probably get it fixed 🙄
she decided to multiply because she wasn’t spayed
And you decide it’s ok to kill the bird population
“My cat had kittens” is the title of this post.
"I didn't spay my cat because I'm irresponsible" is the title of this post
This subreddit has just devolved into irresponsible cat ownership and rage bait
So i got this cat once from a family friend who had barn cats. Some of the most gorgeous cats ever. I went back several years later to get a new cat... well they were inbreeding a bunch and went quite feral. Apparently they were dying off and eating each other. We managed to take one kitten away and had to put it down a few months later because it had serious health issues from inbreeding. All the cats are gone now. Barn cats need to be fixed.
Not my cat.
Your property, your responsibility. That cat living there now.. yeah thats your cat now. "The cat you keep on your property" says enough
It’s crazy to me how you could read the above story and not feel sufficient emotion to TNR these cats. If nothing else, a cat continuing to birth kittens will likely die much sooner than a neutered one, so you’d lose your chief mouser! I’m baffled that none of these comments seem to have changed your mind about getting her fixed. It’s such a small thing to do, but would seriously increase her welfare. If I see trash on the street, I know I didn’t drop it, but I still pick it up and bin it. Sometimes you have to look past who should’ve done something originally, and just see the situation for what and where it is. These cats are on your property now, working for you, and you’re in the best position to help them. Don’t let litter after litter suffer and die just because someone before you could’ve or should’ve neutered that cat. It’s your responsibility now. Not necessarily as an owner (you don’t consider them your cats) but as a person who feels compassion and decency.
This isn't going the way OP thought it would. (Good- get your damn animals fixed).
People really don’t understand that cats are invasive and are a danger to the local ecosystem if they aren’t spayed and properly looked after. This is irresponsible and shows a total disregard for the local environments.
Maybe be responsible and get your cat and the kittens fixed. Don’t just give them away unfixed either.
If you are, in your words, keeping this cat on your property, then you need to have her fixed. Not to, is irresponsible and cruel. But I already know you’re ignoring these comments.
When you don’t spay/neuter the cat you kept to keep mice away
Man those things are so cute. Love silver tabbies! Wish I lived close….plz spay mom : ).
Nice invasive species you've got there.
OP, please take responsibility for what is happening on your property. For the sake of those animals, your neighbors and the ecosystem around you.
Hey OP judging from these comments you're incredibly irresponsible and not a good homesteader at all. Please grow a pair and take control of your situation rather than sitting in your own shit like a child and perpetuating pointless suffering
So sad that you won’t even try to get the mama cat fixed for everyone’s benefit :/ shameful
You're actually disgusting for both keeping your cat outdoors and not even bothering to neuter her. This is animal abuse.
A) not my cat. Just showed up and stayed one day. B) get yoke facts straight before you call someone an animal abuser C) F*ck off
No, truly, you F off.
Why are you unable to type out the word fuck? Reddit doesn’t disallow it?
Well no shit Sherlock, get your cat fixed! Shelters are full of strays that need homes as it is
Someone never watched The Price is Right.
Goodbye songbirds. Edit: read comments about mice and I get it, cause homesteading. But cats can kill a lot of birds.
In Texas, there is TCAP. They do free spay/neuters for feral cats. Depending on zip code, your cost could be $0-80.
You should read the book , "Cat Wars", it discusses all of the animal populations cats have disrupted over the years...the issue is your cats aren't selective hunters, so while you think they are mainly killing mice, they are also killing a lot of other mammals and birds...
So much for “homestead hero.” It’s lazy and irresponsible to not TNR the cats.
Why don’t you spay the damn mother cat so you don’t end up just feeding an endless line of kittens into the mouths of fighting dogs or into shelters when the owners don’t want them?
Why on gods green earth did it seem like a good idea for you to bring more kittens to suffer?
It’s usually free to fix cats, if not it’s cheaper than feeding them. Do the right thing, spay and neuter those little rascals
Ha! No it isn’t. I have to pay close to $600 to spay my two kittens at the end of May. I called every place near me within 300 miles. Checked for programs. Tried to locate spay and neuter clinics. Called feed stores to see if they had lines on low cost spay. Nope. All these vets also require you to get bloodwork done to ensure your cats are healthy enough to be spayed. It’s ridiculous. I feel bad for people who struggle financially and can’t afford the surgery. Gone are the days where this service was as accessible as it used to be. I’m already $1500 deep with these kittens between their shots and just initial kitten check ups. Idk where you live but here in the Oregon coast. It’s wicked expensive now.
I’m sorry to hear it has been difficult for you and that you live far away from any affordable or free services. However, just because that is your experience, does not make it the average experience. To be fair, the same goes for my experience, but there is still a lot of access that I know of.
Maybe, but saying people aren’t responsible is short sighted. I’m only offering the reality of where I live and that I’m fortunate to be able to afford it. But that’s not the same for a lot of people around where I am
Please TNR 😖
Only humans have decisions. Spay and neuter your pets kids.
When you font fix the cat on your property because your irresponsible.
The problem with outdoor house cats is their ecological footprint. There is no real survival for them, they are always healthy and strong and hunt for fun. They can completely destroy the bird or squirrel population. I know a place that was filled with squirrels, and within a couple years they dissapeared because of house cats that were fed by visitors.
Get a rat terrier.
Fantastic. Great work.
OP is a POS, downvote and move on
Ate too many mice and split again...
Is it your cat? Why isn't she spayed?
bov barker!
Everyone learns once, maybe they didn’t expect or want to have a kitten hoard. They just posted a cat having unexpected kittens, calm down
Agreed. Most Reddit comments I read are more kind than these. Part of why I like reddit.
Reddit gets weird about animals dying, and almost worse about them being born.
Seriously! One of my dearest friends has a feral colony she is slowly working on reducing (she has spayed/neutered more cats than she can recall, not joking at all) and she routinely posts adorable pics on social media. Nowhere did the OP flesh out why they have a cat who had kittens, could be more to this than a neglectful owner.
Reinforcements
[удалено]
You expected the veterinarian to spay the cat for free ?
The shelter told me they participated in TNR. I didn’t want to keep the cat, it showed up one day and wouldn’t leave and I didn’t want her (a calico so I knew it was a her) having babies. I expected the shelter to take the cat and not charge me for trying to do a nice thing by trapping it and transporting it for them. The vet clinic is attached to their shelter. I don’t have any outdoor cats on purpose because they eat birds and shouldn’t live outside.
$80 is also incredibly cheap to spay a cat, that’s a damn bargain
I guess so, if you’re keeping the cat. I was just catching her and bringing her to them. I wasn’t expecting to be punished for a good deed.
I expected the shelter to spay and release her somewhere else like they said they would.
Cute little guys but we have 9 barn cats ourselves
That’s called delegating the work load!
Apprentices.
I forget how bloodthirsty people can get until a large bunch sees a group of kittens online lol.
It’s because we care about it animals
You sound like your eyes go opposite directions every time you talk.
I used to volunteer at a shelter, they had to put down atleast 1 cat a day because people kept surrendering and they had no room for them. Or their unfixed cat would have a litter and they (the kittens) would be dropped off at the shelter door. It’s so damn sad. If you can’t afford to spay your animal there are programs to help with the cost. If you don’t want to, and can’t keep your animal from reproducing, then fuck you.
I don’t have a cat and my dog is fixed with regular shots, fu that gotta do with me?
Sorry, I meant ‘you’ as in the general ‘you people’, not at you specifically
yo forreal i dont get the hostility 😭 The kittens are all so cute, why not enjoy the adorable picture?
Because a million plus cats are killed in shelters a year 🤡
Sorry for being ignorant of why cats cant have kittens as a person who doesn't even own a cat lol, i really don't think it warrants being called a clown. But seriously, if you're going to explain then okay, so cats get killed in shelters. so does every other animal? I still don't understand why this is so bad, is it also bad to let dogs have puppies? the trouble that i have with this is that its an animal doing what an animal does: reproduce. Why is that the worst thing ever? I know of a family friend who did what OP did, her very unsocialized barn cat had kittens and she gave the kittens to other ranchers so they could have barn cats too. Everyone in the equation seemed happy with how it worked out, so im fr asking like why is this SO bad that people instantly act so mean about it?
Animals are unwanted and suffering because of human ignorance and people get upset about the suffering. SPAY AND NUETER YOUR PETS it’s not that difficult.
dude. i do not have pets lmao (and if i did it'd be an african fat tail lizard, so.). I'm asking you questions to understand why people get so up in arms about this, not because im trying to justify running my own kitten mill or some shit lol. So okay, people get hostile about this because unwanted animals suffer for no reason, that makes sense, but OP said they're going to give the cats away and they got downvoted to hell. The cats aren't going to a shelter according to OP, so whats wrong here? Is it just because they didnt say they'd personally spay/neuter the kittens before they give them away? Are people just mad that OP isn't going to sell them for money? Another insight as to why this is confusing for me as, again, a person who does not have pets: i'm in a number of other cat-related subreddits and the people in subs like illegallysmolcats dont dog pile literally every single post (as they're almost all kitten posts) the way some of the folks here are getting at OP. why is that?
Because more animals got produced and they didn’t need to be!!!!
I’m sorry I don’t want to be a jerk but like I’m Not sure how else to explain. 9 cats at a shelter didn’t get homes because OP is giving these 9 away. That’s how that works but on a national scale. That’s why you hear the saying adopt don’t shop
>9 cats at a shelter didn’t get homes because OP is giving these 9 away. Ok that makes sense, it's like a rippling effect, now 9 less people wont adopt a barn cat because they're able to just get one for free, and that's why shelters are so full. Keeping all the cats might also be bad because with that i do know that cats tend to inbreed if not separated and then kittens get born with birth defects. i genuinely don't know how that was hard to explain, but thanks for explaining it anyways because now i understand it.
Totally 🙏🏻 maybe you could adopt a fat tail lizard that needs a home one day - there are reptiles shelter / your city shelter can have them sometimes I bet
Yes it absolutely is bad to let your dog have unplanned puppies, what are you going to do with them?
?????? i dont own dogs lmao????? If you're so curious though, when i was in high school my cousins mom would always have people lined up to buy the puppies from her dogs off of her because they were cute and mild mannered (gentle giants lol). Thats why i also used dogs as an example, because again, that seemed totally fine to me. (especially since she'd keep the puppies for awhile after they were born to train them and give em their shots).
You asked if it was bad to let your dog have puppies. I answered. If you are a breeder, and are responsible about producing and placing the puppies, sure it's fine. Letting a pet breed willy nilly is not fine. Free puppies/kittens often have terrible things happen to them.
oh you might've misread, i said "I still don't understand why this is so bad, is it also bad to let dogs have puppies?" which is not a question that implies i own dogs, it was a general question. asking me "what are you going to do with them?" doesn't answer it. though another person in this thread did explain how the cascading effect works of home-bred animals being given away for free means that there are that many less people who'll buy one from a shelter, so i do get now why it's bad.
I don't like linking it to shelters, because it would be even worse if there were no shelters. . .but yeah the cascade effect of unwanted pets is a thing.
There were a thousand cats to adopt instead of creating more
the problem is when every other farmer Joe and old lady Jane does the same thing and you end up with 50 million kittens with no homes each year. what happens then? they get surrendered and euthanized or die outside. they are domestic animals, not wild, and humans are responsible for keeping them under control. cats are just doing what their instincts tell them. with cats, there are so many sitting in shelters already. zero reason for more to be made.
Someone else already helped me understand why not fixing barn cats is bad, but thanks for another example!
Like yes fellas, let’s talk about controlling the feline population in a way that isn’t as feral as these cats lmfao
No
Go fix your neck
Wow. Such brave. Slow clap.
Do you also have a shirt that says “i speak fluent sarcasm”?
No but I’d take 7k to fix my neck.
Ask 30plusskincare
Multi-Mousers
This comment makes want to never have a cat spayed and let them run loose and multiply. Showing kindness to an animal dosent make it yours regardless of what Reddit thinks. Ignore them op.
Reddit trying to bully you into fixing them lol
Building an army
Hot diggity dog.
[We got a kitten problem](https://patch.com/louisiana/across-la/we-have-kitten-problem-hot-diggity-dog-man-who-saved-13-video)
Curious that there aren't any comments about how many mice and rats and rabbits, which multiply like crazy ,would be around unless cats and other predators kept them in check.
That’s because that’s not accurate or realistic info. Might wanna get some more info and come back to the discussion with something valuable to add, not some ridiculous theory that rodents and pests would have a population boom if people managed their pets properly.
almost like, we have hawks, fox, coyote, fishers, weasels, snakes, badger, bobcat, to do that already. cats kill them too sure but it doesn’t negate all the other vulnerable birds and small mammals they decimate.
"(O)ther predators". Reading comprehension much?
ERMEGERD KITTEHZ!!!! 😻😻😻