City shelters hit with seasonal upswing in cat population

Seven tiny kittens, weighing less than a pound each and covered in black, grey and white fluff, mewl and climb over one another for attention at the Animal Care and Adoption Centre in St. John's.

The kittens have all come down with cat flu, similar to human flu with a runny nose and aches and pains, and have had to be separated from other cats so they don't infect them.

A mother and her four kittens, with big eyes and clumsy movements, are in another room. They were all left behind by tenants for a landlord to find.

The mother is fiercely protective over the babies, surveying their every move from atop a metal table covered in brightly coloured blankets, while the kittens play with brightly coloured stuffed mice on the floor below or crawl in and out of the steel sink and over the countertops on the other side of the room.

Feral kittens can become good pets

While I was saddened to read about the feral cat problem in West Boca, I was angered to read the comment "feral cats aren't adoptable" by Dianne Suave, county Animal Care & Control director.

Sixteen years ago, we found a litter of feral kittens in my parents' backyard in New Jersey. When I wanted to adopt one of the kittens, many people tried to tell me that I'd never be able to domesticate a wild cat. I am so grateful that I ignored them, as I have been the proud owner of my beautiful and affectionate cat all these years! The joy she brings to my life is indescribable.

These cats are only out there due to human negligence; don't we owe it to them to give them a chance? I urge people to ignore Ms. Suave's comments as well, and open their hearts and homes to these helpless animals.

YOUR WHOLE PET / Finding a Good Breeder

One of them is a humane society or shelter. Another is an animal rescue group, which is an organization dedicated to helping homeless pets. The third is a responsible breeder.

After I wrote my last column on a group of dogs rescued from a Midwestern puppy mill, I heard from a lot of people wanting to know how to make sure the dog or cat they were planning to bring into their family did, in fact, come from a responsible breeder and not from a mill.

These concerns are well founded. Pet stores routinely assure shoppers that their pets don't come from puppy or kitten mills, and Internet pet store sites certainly won't announce that theirs do. Instead, they use the phrases people find reassuring: "Family raised." "Private breeders." "Raised with love."

Despite those marketing slogans, the reality is that nearly all puppies and kittens sold in pet stores and on the Internet are mass-produced in circumstances that range from truly hellish to sterile, lonely and boring.

San Francisco SPCA offers $2000 reward

The issue of what to do with feral cats has become divisive in San Francisco's Excelsior district, where one has been poisoned and several others are missing and presumed dead.

At Italy and London streets just east of Mission Street there are posters at all four corners in English and Chinese warning neighbors that someone is poisoning feral cats from a colony that lives in the neighborhood.

The posters are from both the city's Animal Care and Control department and the San Francisco chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The SFSPCA poster offers a $2,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case.

Lana Bajsel, who runs Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps find homes for abandoned cats and sometimes even feeds homeless cats, thinks she knows who's responsible for the spate of cat poisonings.