Yeesh, bad cat stories, although it's so great that you're little guy is doing okay, Koffee.

I cannot imagine doing that to a kitten. I found my cat when I was 8 in the middle January (-40 Celsius here). Someone had abandoned her and another cat there and her paws were so frost bitten the skin had peeled off. I'm so thankfully someone at least left them somewhere where they would be found quickly. The people who owned the home where they were abandoned took one cat and we too mine.

Ugh, Anarch, that's horrible. When I was 11 or 12 I was in the car with my mom when she accidentally hit a cat. I completely lost it and couldn't stop crying and my poor mom felt so bad. Everyone assumed I was the cat's owner because I was so upset about the whole thing.

We were lucky at my parents house because they live in a long U-shaped street in the bottom part of the U - so there's virtually no traffic except the houses on that part of the street. We were able to let both of our cats have free reign outside with no worries in 17 years.

We're not going to be letting Ketto outside anytime soon. Luckily an apartment makes that really easy. I'd be so paranoid in high traffic area's.

I think you're smart to keep Ketto indoors...even when I lived out in the country I remember too many sad stories. It's like you think, "it's okay, my cat/dog never goes in the road"...until one day for whatever reason, they do. Or some sicko thinks it's funny to harm an innocent animal or steal somebody's pet to give to their pit bulls that they're training to be fighting dogs. There are just too many weirdos in the world.

Have you guys followed the story about Lola the cat (in the U.K.)? She is okay now, but a totally innocuous older lady called Lola over to her, started petting her and then maliciously grabbed her up and shoved inside a lidded trash bin. Fortuantely there was a camcorder over head and Lola's owner saw the whole incident on tape after she came home and rescued poor Lola. What flipped me out is that you think of some stupid teenage boy doing these things (or atleast I do)...not some grandmotherly lady. You just never know about people.

And BTW, the little kitten is getting bigger every day...he has the run of the house now and seems very happy. I hope he has forgotten about being trapped inside that awful bag.

Okay, forgive me if I am insensitive here, but...why would you stay friends with a person who dumps any living thing? That shows a clear disrespect for life, feline and otherwise.

This breaks my heart because I worked at a No More Homeless Pets clinic for 11 months. This is an initiative started by the Best Friends Society to end the shelter cycle by providing free or low-cost sterilizatin and vaccination, especially for people on public assistance. There are many veterinarians who can provide free sterilization if you ask. The resources are there. During those 11 months, I saw dogs brought in whose uteruses had been prolapsed for days, and one who had prolapsed 3 weeks prior to her getting medical attentin. Pit bulls with their ears cut by their owners, dogs with rubber-coated wider embedded 1 inch into their neck, a dog who tried to chew her feet off from being chained and abandoned for a month...it hurt. We frequently found cats in buckets at the door and dogs tied to our spigot.

The good news is that Trap Neuter Return WORKS. Citizens can rent traps, trap a cat, and for $30 the cat is sterilized, vaccinated, and ear tipped (a corner of th ear is removed during surgery so the cat can be identified as being sterilized). The cat goes back to his are. The City of Jacksonville no longer takes in feral cats, or euthanizes them. Our feral population is starting to slow, and owner surrenders to the city pound are reducing, as are euthanasias.

So...sorry for ranting.

ok, dunno if y'all have heard of Pavement Cat, but if not, it's feel-good:

Back story

Video

Oh, I'm in complete agreement..."friends" was kind of a loose term with her anyway. I met her because she happens to have lived in the same apartment complex these past few years, aside from that we had nothing in common. Our city, comparatively speaking has a lot of resources for cats...she didn'tneed to just dump Tig and her kittens. Besides that, she just moved into an entire HOUSE with her daughter...if they could bring one cat and her daughter's dog, she could surely have brought Tig and the kittens until they found a proper home for them. (Then there's the issue that TIg has had countless litlers of kittens even though I got Leslie all of the info she needed to get Tig fixed for just $10 at Cat Welfare. Apparently, she couldn't be bothered to do this for Tig).

I have not contacted her by e-mail, or otherwise, and have been debating on the issue shouold she contact me. I don't know if I will confront her directly or just not respond. I mean what do you say to someone who can live with a cat for years and then just dump her at her most vulnerable as if she was a bag of trash or a broken lamp? It's really low of me to post digs at a person's religion, but she's one of those Jesus people always going on about "the Lord". I find the irony in this infuriating.

I think it definitely has somehing to do with it. It's confusing to me (non-Christian here) that people exploit and degrade the earth and her animals--isn't it the Lord's creation and we should respect it? But Christianity says animals don'thave souls so they should be treated as such.

I got my cat when a woman in my building was evicted. She left him outside with abag of cat food. He disapeared for a few months, and then started coming around. I wonder if she treats her little boy the same way.

Gandhi said the moral progress of a nation can be judged on the way it treats animals. I agree.

When I was vegetarian, some devout Christian friends explained that they disagreed with the idea that eating animals could be unethical, because God gave humans dominion over the earth and its creatures.

I should say that they wouldn't abuse or neglect animals, and wouldn't use this "dominion" thing to excuse anybody's abuse or neglect. But I wonder if it's linked to behaviour like koffeewitch's...acquaintance.

I wonder what she'd say, koffee, if you said, "Hey, I've been wanting to ask you, how can you live with a cat for years and then just dump her at her most vulnerable as if she was a bag of trash or a broken lamp?"

Blech.