As long as my family has lived in our current home (3 years), we've had a stray problem. The past owners left their cat when they moved.
Since then, one of our neighbors has adopted at least three to four cats in the last three years. When they pass kittenhood, they kick them outside and get a new kitten. Another neighbor moved in and kicked their indoor cat outside and recently adopted a new kitten. I've caught them mating several times now. At this point, because of our neighbors, we have a consistent increase of strays.
They are too friendly and will sit on our porch. They've sprayed/marked it and our porch and entryway smell horrible. They tear up and mark our back yard. Many of them sleep in our yard and tree. Even when we first moved here, a few of them would plant themselves behind our reversing cars when we tried to leave our garage. And they wouldn't move even if we continued moving. We have tried picking them up and moving them, but they follow us right back to the car and sit in dangerous spots.
We cannot freely come or go from our residence. The only way the get them distracted long enough for us to get out or come in is to feed them. We don't want to. They aren't ours. We can't take even one of them in. But if we didn't feed them, we quite literally can't leave.
There's a total of ten strays at this point. We are adopting a puppy and we can't have all these territorial, food aggressive, reproducing strays with fleas, ticks, abscesses, and any other diseases they may carry. We can't risk it.
Please. We are desperate. My parents want to use a mild toxin to spray our property with to deter the cats but it could also harm the puppy so they are apprehensive.
We have called local shelters and rescues, even some far away, and all they would do is fix them and drop them back off in the neighborhood. That doesn't fix the issue that they essentially hold us hostage in our home unless we feed them and likely carry a multitude of illnesses.
Dropping them off the shelter would be considered a personal surrender an individual animal surrender is upwards of $75 at my shelter. We can't swing several $75 drops and marks on our record with the shelter.
Does anyone have any advice? We dont want to drop them in a park or hurt them but we can't have our home surrounded anymore.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/m1rfx8/what_do_i_do_with_these_stray_cats/
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