Starving Kitten: AKA...What the Hell Is Wrong With People?

  • Thread starter Thread starter fachverwirrt
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Didn't mean to abandon my thread...my computer went down and now I'm heading off to work shortly, so I haven't read all the responses yet, but...

UPDATE ON THE KITTEN:

I found her a foster home where she's fed and safe and happy until I can find her a permanent home. :)

Oh, I'm so happy to hear that! :D
 
Seriously, the woman doesnt want a kitten to the point of starving it to death, yet your bosses threat to her is to TAKE THE KITTEN AWAY!!! Wut???

Current Boss Man wasn't threatening to take the kitten from Former Manager Lady, he was promising; feed it once tonight, and I'll then take the problem off your hands. But he was lying.
 
It's a cat! It's not even HER cat! How can you summon such hate for someone who refuses to feed a stray cat? It's not her responsibility to feed it any more than it is yours. If you care so much about it, go feed it yourself.
 
It's hard to describe the personality difference. In general intact males just seem more intense. They have a masculine 'energy' so to speak. And they are much easier to keep slim and muscular.

Yep - super masculine

ETA - good news on the kitten!!
 
Really? I think the British and American fancies have done a great job with the breed; the dogs have lovely personalities and are very healthy on average with great care being taken to health-test dogs to prevent proliferation of the issues they are prone to. They are dwarfed because a dwarfed dog of their type was considered functionally useful for herding [everything but sheep], driving, ratting, guarding, and hunting in the mountains of Wales for the last 3000 years or so; not because someone thought it was cute and inbred a bunch of dogs to look that way.

She's got a lot to say about 'the victims of human breeding programs for purebred dogs', too (pertaining especially to the sensationalist, anti-purebred special Pedigree Dogs Exposed which got so many people excited). Most of which I strongly agree with.
She's saying they make the breeds as healthy as possible within their extremes and mutations, and I'm saying (and other critics are saying) the mutations and extremes themselves are the problem.
 
I get sad too, but a lot of people just don't care about animals. This lady doesn't have any more obligation to stray cats on her property than you do. I will never, ever put food outside for strays - food meant for one means more resources for others to continue to reproduce.

Of course, I do care about animals, and if a stray animal is friendly, I will ask my friends if they are interested; then take it to a shelter. If this is bothering you so much I think you should pick this kitty up yourself and take it to the shelter of your choice. Cute baby kittens usually get adopted fast. If not like you said a quick death is better than a slow one.

Spay and neuter your pets, people.

Eh. In 15 years of pet ownership including that of many intact animals I've never had a problem keeping my pets from reproducing.
 
It's a cat! It's not even HER cat! How can you summon such hate for someone who refuses to feed a stray cat? It's not her responsibility to feed it any more than it is yours. If you care so much about it, go feed it yourself.

Already covered in the OP. It's on someone else's property, so it would mean trespassing or taking the kitten home, which she says she can't do. That's why all the intelligent people in the thread are trying to tell her to take it to someone who can take care of it.

And I would be upset too if I knew there was someone just refusing to feed an animal. Sure, you don't want to help it breed, but you can at least do something other than just watching it shrivel up and die.
 
(I'm hoping her foster mom will fall in love with her and keep her, but I'm still gonna take cute baby kitty pictures and post them on Facebook and Craigslist...) Shhhhh..... :D
 
Eh. In 15 years of pet ownership including that of many intact animals I've never had a problem keeping my pets from reproducing.

Even if your animals are all kept indoors, all it takes is one escape at the right time for them to either impregnate a stray or be impregnated by one. That's a hell of a glib attitude to have.
 
So, if an old dear feels the need for a protective dog to accompany her to the post office when she cashes her pension money, anybody should be able to walk within the circle of her leash's limits without fear of being bitten?
Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, they should.

Why? A dog's protective nature is one of the first things early humans would have harnessed them for. The main reason old dears don't have large, ferocious-looking dogs is because they couldn't guarantee always being able to control them, not because they don't want them. So, if an elderly person needs to rely on a smaller dog, she should have every right to train it to bite people who enter her space uninvited.

This, coming from the guy who took others to task for using deadly force in response to home intruders, is mighty fucking rich.
 
Baby animals evoke sympathy, of course. But nature is red in tooth and claw.
Important enough to be said twice. In a row. Before folding one's arms and settling back into one's buffalo hide armchair on the bear rug under the mounted 18 point buck's head with the feeling of sublime oneness with the natural world that comes from superior firepower and the love of using it.
 
Even if your animals are all kept indoors, all it takes is one escape at the right time for them to either impregnate a stray or be impregnated by one. That's a hell of a glib attitude to have.
It really is. Both of my cats were spayed as kittens, and kept as indoor cats until we had a yard to fence properly, but they were both escape artists, as most cats are. There is no doubt in my mind that had they been intact, there would have been litters, in spite of my best efforts.
 
I love all the people leaping to respond to my hyperbolic statements as though they're things that can actually be challenged. As though they're going to somehow magically convince me that, wait, I DO like dogs more than cats!

My black Lab does not slobber.

It's still got a tongue that's much slimier than any cat's.

It's my experience if you keep a clean home and the dog spends most of its time in the home, neither the dog nor the home will stink.

Dogs smell like dogs. Not a problem if that smell doesn't bother you, but I don't particularly care for it. (And the specific examples I'm thinking of are all well-groomed dogs kept indoors, in very clean homes.)

Dogs can be trained to only urinate and defecate outside and signal their owner when they need to do so.

No shit? (Pun intended.) The point is that they leave lovely gooey lumps of it all over for you to (one hopes) pick up. I've never had to comb cat shit out of the lawn when I had one, and I've never had to wipe cat shit off my foot because some asshole couldn't be bothered to pick up after their pet in public.

You forgot to add "bark and yelp and make other mega-annoying loud sounds."

Oh yes, I did forget about that one. I've never had a neighbor's cat bother me like a neighbor's dog.

But without fail, I can always tell a cat household almost immediately upon entering despite a well-tendered litterbox.

You can immediately tell the cat households... that you could smell. You haven't spotten the ones you couldn't.
 
Before folding one's arms and settling back into one's buffalo hide armchair on the bear rug under the mounted 18 point buck's head with the feeling of sublime oneness with the natural world that comes from superior firepower and the love of using it.

It was funnier the first way.
 
Again with the sociopath thing? They're fucking CATS! They're not part of society; they're fucking animals. I love that according to the SDMB, if you don't worship Teh Kitteh, you're now a sociopath. The bar has never been lower, lemmetellya.

You said it was OK to callously treat a cat and destroy it as you would a pot. Nobody here was proselytizing for the First Church of Latter-Day Felines. However, your post seems to indicate that you'd be fine with someone jamming a syringe into a cat's eyes through which to inject hydrochloric acid. Hence my earlier "yikes!".
 
If you had some radioactive material, you could have put the cat in a box. That way it never dies.
 
It really is. Both of my cats were spayed as kittens, and kept as indoor cats until we had a yard to fence properly, but they were both escape artists, as most cats are. There is no doubt in my mind that had they been intact, there would have been litters, in spite of my best efforts.
I've had basically the same experience. Female cats might normally have absolutely no interest in leaving their domain...until they go into season. And for the cats who do like to get out and explore forbidden territory, then they become even more motivated. I had a kitten who was about 6 or 7 months old, and SHE got pregnant during an unauthorized excursion. She had five kittens of her own (this was before I knew that cats could be spayed during early pregnancy). So, I spay and neuter as soon as the vet is OK with it.

Also, a cat in heat is miserable. Don't know about dogs, but a queen in heat is desperate for some hot cat-on-cat action. Or human-on-cat action. Or inanimate object-on-cat action. She wants RELIEF. And intact male cats have a nasty habit of spraying. So...I get my pet cats desexed, for their sake and my own.
 
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