Longtime readers of this blog may recall that back in '08, they watched from afar as I dealt with the problem of a stray pregnant pussycat in my backyard. The adventure was serialized here over many days and if you want to read it, go to this posting and then read forward for a while until the matter gets resolved. Don't worry…it has a happy ending.
Before we got to that though, it was quite a struggle and it made me acutely aware of one of those problems that few people like to think about. If I told you that some crazy person was going around murdering cats and had slaughtered thousands of them, you'd be horrified and you'd say, "Someone's got to stop that sicko and lock him away for the rest of his life." But in fact, your tax dollars pay to have perfectly-healthy cats "put to sleep" (i.e., killed) all the time and the numbers are staggering.
I currently feed four feral cats in my backyard, one of them the cat in the above-linked thread. She is now well and happy and not a mother. My situation here is manageable but it is not manageable in at least one area of Los Angeles that is overrun with feral felines. Here is an article about the situation and it should serve as a cautionary tale of what can happen if you don't pay attention to the situation before the local cats breed exponentially and there are way, way too many of them.
In the article, you'll see a photo of a lady named Christi Metropole who founded The Stray Cat Alliance, a charity that is attempting to deal with this matter. When I had my problem, she was the person I spoke to and she told me how to do what I did. I'm sending the group a donation and if you appreciate this blog and want to do something nice for me, perhaps you can do the same.