Presently, I feed 81 felines before my work day begins and am using about two bags of Cat Chow every day. Purina loves me.
On really cold days, I will buy some good wet food for them. These cats are what I call victims of human beings because people dump them off in populated areas like restaurants, grocery stores, office complexes, doctor’s offices and more. People move out of their homes and leave their animals, which is a problem in Clarke and surrounding counties. Some people will not spay or neuter their pets, thus they keep producing to the point that it gets out of control!
Feral cats are undomesticated; they have never had a human touch. They are afraid of us. They are not aggressive towards us, but if you grab one (which isn’t a good idea), you may get scratched or bitten. As far as kittens, it’s a good idea to try and get them before they get past the seven-week period or they will become feral.
Many cats get lost and never make it back home, but if they had a collar or were micro-chipped, they probably would have been returned by someone that finds them. During my five years of working with cats, none of them that I have caught have had an ID.
These beautiful animals want to live, just like you and me, and that’s the purpose of this letter.
We need people, farmers, ranchers, etc. that will take our feral cats and give them a good home and be a caretaker to them. If you have a problem of rodents eating the animal feed, you won’t anymore with these cats on your farm. We have one chicken farmer who was overrun with wharf rats. He now has five of our cats and he doesn’t see the rats anymore.
In one area I’m feeding a group of growing kittens that were dumped by their owners. I can pick most of them up by hand, and have done so by giving seven of them to people that said “Pick one out for me and I will get them to a vet and have them fixed.” There are 18 left. In closing, I’m not going to ask you to please have your animals spayed or neutered, I’m begging you to.
You can contact me at home at 706-546-0433, or speak to Sue Jordan, also a member of D.R.A.R, at this number.
Sincerely,
Bill Koehlke
Winterville
