My friend/neighbor Elena is a cat-lover straordinaria. Her troupe of strays grows larger every year and right now there are six little ones (who obviously have the same number of fathers among them) that need homes. Elena would gladly keep all of them, but (a) she and husband, Paolo, aren't here during the winter months and (b) kibbles for more than a dozen hungry mouths is not a negligible expense.
I've explained to Elena that there is a safe medical procedure that would lower the birth rate by 100% and that feeding fewer cats would also save her a whole lot of Euros. For her own (unexplained) reasons, Elena resists this solution. I understand that most Italians would rather not deal with a male animal's non-stop sexual urges, but our cities, towns, villages and countryside are chock-full of the inevitable results of their mating.My front steps have been marked by dozens of territorial claimants and my two (fixed) cats are regularly terrorized by yowling prowlers.
And putting female cats through the discomfort of estres plus the stress of litter after litter of newborns is not my idea of a sane live-and-let-live philosophy. Elena's older female cats are lethargic and bad-tempered and who can blame them?
OK, they weren't bagged and drowned as kittens, which sometimes happens, but all the gown-up females do is eat and have more kids.
Elena's going to put up posters next week and wants to borrow my camera to help advertise Nasolina, Bruno, Miranda, Lulu, Pinocchio and Rosa. Can you guess which kittens prospective adopters will want to take home?
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment