Holiday Home Moggy
Should you feed a stray cat? The answer for anyone with a heart is an immediate ‘yes’. But what if you are a second homer who is not going to be there every week? On my last three visits to Rock House, a shabby little moggy has been woefully hanging around my garden.
Unable to resist, I have left out some dried food and watched from the window while he (it seems like a he) cautiously eats the offering. I have asked around the neighbours and nobody seems to have lost a cat. There are no plaintive posters on the lamp posts or in the local vet’s. Besides, my visitor has the look of one who has lived alone for a very long time.
It has always been a mystery to me how cats end up as strays – feral even. In some cases, the owners have moved and the cat has somehow been ‘left behind’. Ghastly as that sounds, it does happen, apparently. Or there are those who simply dump litters and the sturdier ones survive; in a seaside town there are bins full of discarded takeaways and dim-witted mice.
Toms that have not been neutered are prone to stray in search of love, or at least satisfaction, and can just end up getting lost. They are also 80 per cent more likely to get into a fight and get seriously injured. Mr Bob, as my five year- old has taken to calling him, looks like he has survived a scrap or two. There are more than two million stray cats living on the streets of Britain and most of them have a grim life, especially the females who spend most of their lives having random litters – one female can produce another 40 cats in two years, and so the cycle continues.
I am torn. I would dearly love to have a cat in Hastings but I live most of the time in London. I do have a cat in London, Lulu Guinness – in tribute to her black-and-white colouring and penchant for climbing into my handbags – and she doesn’t like the company of other cats.
I could attempt to capture him (not easy) and then take him to a vet for neutering, which would radically improve his life chances, but then what? In the meantime, I have bought some more cat food in case he comes back.
Next week: Liverpool loo
Unable to resist, I have left out some dried food and watched from the window while he (it seems like a he) cautiously eats the offering. I have asked around the neighbours and nobody seems to have lost a cat. There are no plaintive posters on the lamp posts or in the local vet’s. Besides, my visitor has the look of one who has lived alone for a very long time.
It has always been a mystery to me how cats end up as strays – feral even. In some cases, the owners have moved and the cat has somehow been ‘left behind’. Ghastly as that sounds, it does happen, apparently. Or there are those who simply dump litters and the sturdier ones survive; in a seaside town there are bins full of discarded takeaways and dim-witted mice.
Toms that have not been neutered are prone to stray in search of love, or at least satisfaction, and can just end up getting lost. They are also 80 per cent more likely to get into a fight and get seriously injured. Mr Bob, as my five year- old has taken to calling him, looks like he has survived a scrap or two. There are more than two million stray cats living on the streets of Britain and most of them have a grim life, especially the females who spend most of their lives having random litters – one female can produce another 40 cats in two years, and so the cycle continues.
I am torn. I would dearly love to have a cat in Hastings but I live most of the time in London. I do have a cat in London, Lulu Guinness – in tribute to her black-and-white colouring and penchant for climbing into my handbags – and she doesn’t like the company of other cats.
I could attempt to capture him (not easy) and then take him to a vet for neutering, which would radically improve his life chances, but then what? In the meantime, I have bought some more cat food in case he comes back.
Next week: Liverpool loo