I was recently having a conversation with a fellow rescuer at Berks Community Cats and something he said has stuck with me: "I can't make this more important to me than it is to you." He said this when we were talking about how to address self-sabotage in our colony caretakers. The people who take care of a bunch of cats they often cannot even get physically close to clearly care. They reach out for help to spay/neuter and vaccinate and that says they care a whole lot. So my question then is why do some people deliberately sabotage the TNR operation? I just don't get it.
I'm thinking there could be some anxiety. I understand the initial worries. However, I wonder why would you stop us when your colony is so close to being finished? It often isn't a conversation but feeding when not supposed to do so. The kitties really will be okay without food for just half a day to a whole day, but less than 24 hours. I hope the reason isn't because kittens will be missed. Sure, they're cute but the world has enough. We don't have room for the ones born now.
The past two years have been unreal in the animal rescue world. Every single day I am seeing the posts for rehoming animals, the surrendering to shelters or rescues, and the absurd amount of kittens that are being born and the numbers are astonishing. So many animals and preventable suffering. Foxy's Cradle is a rescue I follow on FaceBook. They intake neonatal orphans and/or moms with kittens. Lately, the cases have been heart-breaking. Kittens who need double eye removals, kittens with maggots eating them alive, kittens who have been mauled by wild animals, kittens who were dumped on the side of the road, kittens thrown from vehicles, kittens kittens kittens. I don't know how they do it; they're a whole other level. The money required to save these fragile lives along with the stomachs to handle the wounds are not something I have. These are the kinds of things I hope caretakers think of when they think of kittens, not just how cute they are. I want people to think about the suffering these tiny animals endure because of us humans. If not for us, they wouldn't exist in out of control populations and if not for us, there won't be any change. TNR is the most humane way to end the cycle of disease and suffering.
I have an injured adult male cat in a trap right now waiting for his neuter appointment in the morning. He is covered in puncture wounds likely from fighting other males. Did you know they'll travel miles for an unspayed female? When they fight, they spread diseases like feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and feline leukemia (FeLV). Some individuals advocate for cats with these diseases to be euthanized so they don't continue to spread them. FeLV is spread through simple things like grooming another cat or sharing a water dish. FIV is spread primarily through bites. The males risk predator encounters and being ran over in addition to disease. The females can become pregnant right after giving birth. Learning this was a shock to me too.
So knowing these things, why sabotage a trap day? I am genuinely curious why someone would want to do this and what could trappers do to change it.
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