3-7-08 very young pregnant cat under my vehicle in driveway

It was just a few weeks ago that I was able to place, with a local cat rescue, a litter of weaned kittens from another very young mother cat. It was her second pregnancy and she was so thin and frail and very very young. She needed help. I brought her inside and within a few days she had her kittens. You could feel all her bones. Of course she did not have enough milk but PetsMart carried a kitten milk formula and by the time they were weaned, each one of her kittens was healthy and half her size. There were some very cold days near the end of last year. There was a male tabby not neutered who I had seen roaming outside for several years. On one of those cold days he came up to me in my driveway and cried out. He was about to collapse. I was horrified to find out he was a skeleton under his medium to long hair coat. He had grease marks on his paws and coat. As weak as he must have been, I saw him a few days earlier climbing up into the underside of my vehicle to try to stay warm and dry. I think he belonged to one of the neighbors who moved out about a year ago. I brought him inside. He died on Thanksgiving Day. Even though rescues neuter the pets in their care before adopting them out, how many of those pets despite the adoption screening process will end up as strays getting picked up and killed in the city pound or dying of starvation or some other horrible fate. It doesn't make sense that so many owners don't bother to spay/neuter their cats and it doesn't make sense that they let them run loose in a neighborhood where they are in harm's way. The city of San Antonio, Texas kills over 80 pets daily average and there are over 500 pets in the San Antonio city pound daily average. I live in a city that overwhelmingly does not care when it comes to helping vulnerable and valuable lives of individuals and pets forced into harm's way.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• san
• antonio
• texas
• need
• help
• rescue
• cat
• cats
• city
• pound