Letters to the Editor
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Cat
Never sell a cat short! Despite its domesticated beginnings, your description of its behavior, not to mention its claws, suggests that it still has its basic instincts and can take care of itself!
Let it go! Almost anywhere is fine, just as long as it's not close to home.
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Thank you
I will be buying two scat mats within minutes. I think this will work. Thank you for the advice.
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Anonymous,
I cannot tell you how much I disagree with your comment about letting the cat go. That is not the same as adapting it to the outside. It is even crueler than the nutcases here who want to drown or shoot the poor cat.
Do a little research and you will find only a certain percentage of cats can learn to hunt. Over the years domestication and ready food have dimmed the hunting instinct in cats. Some hunt; some don't. My hunch is that this cat won't hunt. Remember, the LW said he is not even much interested in toys and he had no mother to teach hunting skills so if that prey instinct is not intact, the poor sucker will only starve.
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What Would Ted Nugent Do?
Kill It and Grill It.
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bogus letter alert
this is obviously a fake
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kill the cat
I have to marvel at the energy directed at one lousy cat: have it killed.
Heavens!
But my assumption is that the owners are more valuable and have more to contribute to life than tending this cat. (Failing that, they could do something similar for an imaginary animal, totally instead of only paritally a creation of their own minds.)
But then maybe the don't agree, maybe they think the cat is more important than they are? Well, then, as you were.
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Oliver, the monster kitty
I am the LW's aunt and I have known Oliver from the very first day (I was the one who convinced them to take him home and raise him).
He has always been a little flaky, but once they moved from my town to where they are now, he got worse. And obviously after 2 yrs of living there, worse still.
My husband and I went to visit them at Thanksgiving time and he was pleasant to us, but I think it was because he remembered us from his baby days. I had fed him lots of bottles over the months, spent lots of time at their house and babysat him whenever they went out of town. I never had a problem with him.
But now I think they need to try some kind of drug therapy for him (or maybe for them!? ha) because it's obvious he's got some serious problems; maybe he's still shell-shocked from moving and starting in a new place.
And who knows - maybe there's some kind of smell in their apartment from another cat or a dog or something that only he can smell and it bothers him.
I have no answers, but I hope they try everything before giving up, because I know even tho they say they hate him, they really hate his mental problems.
He's a beautiful kitty. I hope it works out happily for them.
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Gberke and the other jerks here.
Do the world a favor. Find a busy highway and go lie down in the fast lane.
Thank you.
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There's Hope for Psycho Cats!
Trust me...I have first-hand experience with this! I've been lucky/unlucky enough to be a magnet for abandoned kittens. It's hard to pass up a helpless kitten seemingly abandoned, but there's no way to know what you are going to get when you are on the other side of kittenhood! Here's the deal - most "abandoned" kittens are probably ferrel and often they truly aren't abandoned but the mom is somewhere nearby, often looking for food. Sometimes they do get lost as the mom is trying to transport one kitten at a time to a new location - something scares her, she drops the kit and watches until she feels it's safe to come back or not! The thing with ferrel cats is that they are very often inbred. Add in the actual nature of ferrel cats and it takes a LONG time for them to become remotely normal. I have several formerly ferrel cats that were brought home as kittens and hand-raised. You would think being bottle-fed by a caring human would make them nicer, but not necessarily. (There are substantial articles by vets, etc. out there to explain this...) These cats can be more territorial than "normal" cats and often have organic psychological issues that come from being inbred. One of our cats is now 6 and it's only been in the last few years that we've stopped worrying about the possibility of her slicing other people to shreds! (She terrorized a former girlfriend of my son to the point where she wouldn't come to the house..). If you have the patience to find the moments/situations where your cat behaves nicely and can offer positive reinforcement during THOSE TIMES ONLY, you can still rehabilitate the cat. 3 yrs old is NOT too old - most of our cats mellowed around the 4 yr mark! The thing is to not try to force the cat into behaviors when he is not in the mood. Of course, this being a cat, you may only have 5 minutes of good mood per day...if you're lucky! But there is hope if you can hang in there and try becoming the Cat Whisperer!
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I've got a better idea
Cary,
With all due respect, this is terrible advice. You are clearly not a cat person. This cat is most likely feral and a cat behaviorist is not going to help. I paid $25 to one to help with some nutsy stuff my cat was doing and, I could have flushed it down the toilet for all the help it did. Cats are not trainable. At best, they may be able to handle some of the litterbox issues. But that's about it.
If I were in this situation, I would drive the cat out to the country to place where there are lots of barns and horses and release it. It will find its way into somebody's barn and hayloft and eat the food left out for the other semi-feral barn cats.
It will be fine. Really. This is not a cat meant for human companionship.