Laugh. Learn. Love cats.
Pierre: The red dot escaped from under the ottoman in the living room, and I’m on the job trying to catch him.
He’s slippery. Every time you think you’ve caught him….
… the red dot somehow gets away again.
A little help over here? I’m not tall enough to get him if he goes any higher!
Does the red dot get loose in your house?
I always joke that here in Florida, we have two seasons: summer and not summer. We also have kitten season and more kittens season.
It’s sometimes hard to remember that it doesn’t work that way in the rest of the country. I have driven legs of transports that took kittens north during the winter to rescue organizations who didn’t have any kittens available. In the depth of winter, the snowy parts of the country see the number of kittens in shelters and rescue organizations dwindle to nothing. Female cats have enough trouble fending for themselves under the difficult conditions and don’t procreate successfully that time of year.
But when it’s kitten season, there are cats and kittens galore, more than rescues can handle, right?
Well, that’s why I was surprised to learn that in some parts of the country, this year there aren’t as many cats and kittens needing care as last year or the year before that. The shelter intake numbers are actually down. From where I sit in the part of the country that seems to be a feral cat factory, this seems impossible to imagine. What’s going on?
The ASPCA noticed this trend, and they dug into the numbers to figure out what’s going on. Most important, the numbers reported by their partner shelters across the country confirmed that overall cat intake is trending downward.
When they took a closer look at the American Pet Products National Pet Owner’s Survey, they found that in the past 12 years, they discovered that while the numbers of cats living with families has increased, the way that people add a cat or kitten to their family has changed. Less people report adding cats to their family as a result of kittens born from their own cat. Less people are also reporting they got a cat from a friend or took in a stray. At the same time, people who say they adopted a cat more than doubled.
If people are responsibly having their own cats spayed or neutered, they’re going to have to turn to these outside sources for new pets to join their families, so that’s actually really good news!
Just like the dropoff of supply in kittens in winter happening in some parts of the country and not others during the winter, rescue organizations and shelters everywhere don’t seem to be seeing these gradual shifts in numbers yet. But the trend seems to be real enough that years of spay and neuter campaigns and trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs to try to control the feral cat population are finally starting to show results.
Everyone who has reminded a friend or neighbor to spay or neuter their cat has made a difference. Every time you let people know there are reduced-price options for sterilizing their cat when they can’t afford a full-service veterinarian has made a difference. Every feral cat you feed who you also get spayed or neutered has made a difference. The effort isn’t over, but it’s making a difference.
It’s hard to believe when change seems so slow to come, especially if you are in one of the parts of the country like mine where the supply of cats seems absolutely endless. But there’s evidence on a broad scale even if it’s not in your community yet that the years of effort to educate the public into caring better for the cats among us is paying off.
That’s something we can all be happy about.
Image credits: depositphotos/cynoclub, depositphotos/Lusoimages, depositphotos/Cherry-Merry
Tomorrow is Pierre’s eleventh gotcha day. We published his gotcha story for his ninth gotcha day, and we are retelling it here today.
Once upon a time in June 2005, there was a litter of cats born on a boat, under a tarp. The mother cat didn’t know that it was nearly summer, and that’s when boats start to be used more often. She just saw a sheltered location for her kittens and took advantage of it.
The boat’s owner didn’t know about the kittens, and moved the trailer. By the time the boat’s owner discovered the kittens, the mother cat was nowhere to be found, and the kittens had to go to a local rescue group to be raised. Every kitten in the litter got nautical names, and when they were old enough, the whole litter went to a pet store adoption event.
A little gray tabby kitten, named Pier, was looking out of the cage at the pet store when his eyes locked with a strange woman’s eyes, and it was love at first sight. The woman hadn’t planned to bring home a kitten that day, but when it is love at first sight, you have to do something about it. She talked to the adoption volunteer, who happened to be the foster who had raised the gray tabby kitten, and little Pier came home that day. He was renamed Pierre.
He was kind of a timid little guy and spent a lot of his first week under the sofa, but quickly learned to come out for food and playtime.
(He still plays with that same Christmas mouse toy to this day, eleven years later!)
And pretty soon he was hanging out on the sofa like a big kid, showing off his spectacular kitten tummy.
He quickly showed a special talent for getting inside things.
Including getting into trouble.
He started to grow up, but he didn’t grow out of that tummy exhibitionism.
Or grow out of getting inside things.
And under things, too.
He may be a senior kitty, his reflexes are as fast as ever.
And let’s just say that he never has outgrown being just a little bit goofy.
So happy eleventh gotcha day, Pierre!
Thank you to all of our friends in the blgosphere for sharing his big day with us!
Newton: Oh my cat, look what’s right outside my window. RIGHT outside my window!
Newton: Can you believe he’s just hanging there, mocking me?
Newton: He’s close enough to touch. Finally, a squirrel of my own!
Squirrel: Sorry, no touching allowed.
Squirrel: I’m out of here!
