A Confession and a Promise

I'm going to tell you guys something that I have been intentionally not telling you since I started this blog. It's something that I feel terrible about, and I didn't want anyone to know. Now I'm going to put it out there because telling you about it will force me to actually do something to fix it.

I have mentioned, sort of in passing, the cats that live here. What I didn't tell you is how fucking many of them there are. My dad's property is completely overrun with half-feral cats. I honestly have no idea how many there actually are. What I do know is that their numbers are steadily increasing. We are constantly finding new kittens, and sometimes new adult cats just show up out of nowhere. This may not sounds like such a horrible thing, but it is. Because there are so many of them, and so few of them are even remotely tame, we can't really take care of them. We feed them and give them water, but that's about it. Things happen to them; they randomly disappear, they get hit by cars, they get sick, and there really isn't anything I can do about it.

It used to be that, whatever else might be wrong in my life, I could at least hold onto the fact that I was someone who always tried to do what was right. Well, letting this continue isn't right. It makes me feel like a bad person, and a hypocrite. I have ignored this situation for so long by telling myself that the cats weren't my responsibility. They were never my cats, and this whole thing started well before I moved back here. Some of them descended from cats that my grandmother used to have, others I think were dropped off, or just found their way here. The thing is though, it doesn't matter whose responsibility they should be. Someone has to do something.

I know there's nothing I can really do about the ones who are already here. No one is going to want to adopt half-wild cats, especially when everyone else is always trying to get rid of kittens too. And there is no way I'm going to send them to a shelter, knowing they would just be killed; at least in their current situation they have a chance at survival. What I can do though, is stop the cycle from continuing. So here is the promise; I am going to find some way to get them spayed and neutered so they can't just keep multiplying. I have no idea how I'm going to afford it (I'll max out my credit card if I have to, even though that probably still won't be enough), or even how I will manage to catch them, but I will find a way. There are certain ones who always seem to be pregnant, so maybe if I start with them I can at least slow the cycle down so that I can eventually catch up. Whatever it takes though, I am not just going to ignore this anymore.

So if anybody knows of any vets in the area who might be willing to give me some kind of bulk discount or something, it would be greatly appreciated.