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Julie forgot the
apartment repairman was coming to fix her sliding glass door that day.
Later at work, she realized she also forgotten to confine her seven
month old kitten, Kali, in the bedroom. When she arrived home, Kali was
waiting for her outdoors, under the pine tree. "Thank goodness
you’re okay," she said to the kitten. A week or so later,
Julie noticed that the kitten was putting on weight. She felt
disappointed when she realized Kali was pregnant. She had been waiting
for Kali to go through one heat cycle before spaying, which she'd always
heard was best. But she hadn’t been in a hurry.
After all, Kali never went outdoors.
With Christmas coming, Julie didn’t worry about finding homes
for Kali’s kittens. She
would just take them into the store where she worked and put them in the
window. The four kittens, when
placed in the window at work, all found good homes within one week. Six
months later, Kali's kittens had matured and their stories went like
this: A striped female went to live with a mother
with two children. No longer kitten cute, the kids paid little attention
to her anymore. She was left outside most of the time. When she
delivered five kittens, the family put a “free kitten” ad in the
paper. Luckily, a man was
interested and took all five. He
said he sold the kittens to a local dealer, who sold them to a research
facility. The family did not have the mother cat spayed. Another family took
the black male kitten. They said he was a great cat, and they let him
out periodically. When the cat was eight months old and sexually active,
he spent a great deal of time roaming the neighborhood looking for
receptive females. One day his excursions took him across a highway
where a car struck him. The family discovered their dead pet, and the
parents told their crying children that those things happened and they
would get another cat. In his short life, this cat fathered eight
litters 50 kittens. The young woman who
took the black female kitten lived in a no pets apartment. Her landlord
discovered the cat and ordered her to get rid of the pet or be evicted.
Unable to move and unable to find anyone to take a mostly grown cat, she
took the animal to the country and abandoned her. In the year and a half
before this cat died of distemper, she had four litters of wild kittens. The young man who
adopted the striped female had her spayed when she was six months old
and has kept her indoors at all times. This cat was a healthy, wonderful
companion for him for years. In the fifteen months
after Kali had her litter, 83 kittens were born. Julie found "good" homes for Kali's first
four kittens, but she didn't consider the other 79. The sad fact is that
every single litter, planned or accidental, adds to pet over population.
The cycle must stop before it starts; before
that one litter. If Kali and her descendants were allowed to breed at will, she could be the source of 420,000 cats in just seven years. But 420,000 are not the root of the pet over population problem: Kali's one litter is. One animal, or even a handful of animals, from one person doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem. Ten or twenty persons bringing litters into animal shelters daily makes the picture clearer. Whether this article helped you understand the over population problem or you've always understood it, now is the time to do something about it! Have your pet spayed or neutered, then pass this article along to someone who could benefit from it. Tulsa Animal Shelter – 918-669-6299 |