I know that many posters have strong feelings about pet owners and mistreated animals.
I know that this post will seem amusing to those of you who have raccoons, bears, and javelinas freely roaming your back yards.
I know that this post will annoy those of you (especially Young Dreamers & parents) who assume that we ER'd geezers can nap all day.
But dammit, I just want to sleep through the night again. Even more importantly for domestic harmony, I want my spouse to be able to sleep through the night again.
A neighborhood cat roams our streets and yards at night, yowling almost endlessly. The volume and pitch are piercing and penetrate even the highest-quality earplugs. (Two decades in submarine enginerooms. I know earplugs.) Hawaii summer is coming on so closing the windows is not an option, and indeed this cat's yowling can make windowglass vibrate near its resonant frequency. It's not even fighting with other cats-- it's just carrying on a ceaseless monologue as it wanders the yards. Depending on its cruising speed and the weather, it comes by at least 2-3 times/night.
This constant racket would seem to be the antithesis of a survival trait-- a volunteer begging for a feline Darwin Award. Or maybe it's a sign of kitty cognitive dysfunction syndrome.
We are not going to adopt this cat. Spouse is violently allergic to cat hair, and even with daily antihistamines can only be around them for an hour. Our pet bunny may have inspired a number of nightly feline visitors over the years, but now that he's passed away we're done with pets for a while.
The Hawaii Humane Society sponsors a number of feral cat feeders. The feeders borrow the Society's traps to catch them (the cats, not the Society staff), take them to the Society for neutering, and release them back to the herd. The Society euthanizes non-social animals, but due to adverse publicity has recently started a program of releasing non-social animals to a local feral cat herd if a feeder has adopted them. Or perhaps they're just misleading the public while keeping the crematorium going.
It turns out that our neighbors, two doors up, are feral cat feeders. This yowling cat is a male who impregnated a feral female, and the result is three young feral cats. The neighbors have been feeding all five of them (including their own two neutered housecats) and the other four all been trapped/neutered/released. The male still won't let them get close enough to touch him. Although the female and the younger cats may eventually be domesticated, the noisemaker resists their efforts and stays away from humans. In addition to all his other issues, the neighbors say he has an eye that's either been destroyed by disease or by fighting. From what they can tell at a distance, it may have atrophied in the socket. The cat could be blind in one eye and may be in pain, which might account for the noise and the non-social behavior.
We know what the cat looks like and we can certainly recognize its cry. Hypothetically we could borrow a trap from the Society and start catching the neighborhood critters until we get the one we've been looking for. The Society has a 24/7 receiving desk with a microchip reader, so at least we'd be able to figure out who owns the cat and what to do next. I'd favor the "feral cat relocation program" because I doubt anyone will adopt a cat with this one's behavior or appearance.
Any other suggestions? Instead of going to all the effort of trapping the cat, I'd be just as happy if I could discourage it from coming onto our property.
I know that this post will seem amusing to those of you who have raccoons, bears, and javelinas freely roaming your back yards.
I know that this post will annoy those of you (especially Young Dreamers & parents) who assume that we ER'd geezers can nap all day.
But dammit, I just want to sleep through the night again. Even more importantly for domestic harmony, I want my spouse to be able to sleep through the night again.
A neighborhood cat roams our streets and yards at night, yowling almost endlessly. The volume and pitch are piercing and penetrate even the highest-quality earplugs. (Two decades in submarine enginerooms. I know earplugs.) Hawaii summer is coming on so closing the windows is not an option, and indeed this cat's yowling can make windowglass vibrate near its resonant frequency. It's not even fighting with other cats-- it's just carrying on a ceaseless monologue as it wanders the yards. Depending on its cruising speed and the weather, it comes by at least 2-3 times/night.
This constant racket would seem to be the antithesis of a survival trait-- a volunteer begging for a feline Darwin Award. Or maybe it's a sign of kitty cognitive dysfunction syndrome.
We are not going to adopt this cat. Spouse is violently allergic to cat hair, and even with daily antihistamines can only be around them for an hour. Our pet bunny may have inspired a number of nightly feline visitors over the years, but now that he's passed away we're done with pets for a while.
The Hawaii Humane Society sponsors a number of feral cat feeders. The feeders borrow the Society's traps to catch them (the cats, not the Society staff), take them to the Society for neutering, and release them back to the herd. The Society euthanizes non-social animals, but due to adverse publicity has recently started a program of releasing non-social animals to a local feral cat herd if a feeder has adopted them. Or perhaps they're just misleading the public while keeping the crematorium going.
It turns out that our neighbors, two doors up, are feral cat feeders. This yowling cat is a male who impregnated a feral female, and the result is three young feral cats. The neighbors have been feeding all five of them (including their own two neutered housecats) and the other four all been trapped/neutered/released. The male still won't let them get close enough to touch him. Although the female and the younger cats may eventually be domesticated, the noisemaker resists their efforts and stays away from humans. In addition to all his other issues, the neighbors say he has an eye that's either been destroyed by disease or by fighting. From what they can tell at a distance, it may have atrophied in the socket. The cat could be blind in one eye and may be in pain, which might account for the noise and the non-social behavior.
We know what the cat looks like and we can certainly recognize its cry. Hypothetically we could borrow a trap from the Society and start catching the neighborhood critters until we get the one we've been looking for. The Society has a 24/7 receiving desk with a microchip reader, so at least we'd be able to figure out who owns the cat and what to do next. I'd favor the "feral cat relocation program" because I doubt anyone will adopt a cat with this one's behavior or appearance.
Any other suggestions? Instead of going to all the effort of trapping the cat, I'd be just as happy if I could discourage it from coming onto our property.
