Community cats warm to their secret guardians

 By Frances Stewart

Blossom gets the topcat treatment from her secret owner.

 

Blossom has a secret – she’s among a growing number of "community cats" in the ACT.

The former stray was informally adopted by a kindly Canberran who left food out for community cats on a regular basis, as well as taking them for health check-ups and getting several desexed at the secret owner’s own expense.

"Blossom’s the love of my life," the secret cat owner told the Sunday Canberra Times. "She sleeps on my bed at night, although she’s still very independent."

Nationally, growing numbers of pet owners are confessing to keeping wild, stray or homeless "community cats", with statistics from vets showing four in 10 cat owners are secretly feeding at least one cat that isn’t theirs.

But resources for those who care for a secret cat are limited and for many concerned community cat feeders there are few options except to turn the animal in to the RSPCA or animal services - where cats have up to an 80 per cent chance of being euthanised.

For those feeding happy and healthy community cats that they did not want to risk having put down, animal lover and community cat feeder Michelle Williamson created the Secret Cat Society after ‘‘being adopted’’ by a semi-feral stray that had belonged to the previous owners of her house.

"She’s the kind of cat that can live a good life with a bit of support, but that would be killed at a shelter as she’s not cuddly," she said.

The RSPCA is urging people to sterilise cats – secret or otherwise – before cat breeding season starts in August.

For more information on community cat care, visit the Secret Cat Society.

 

.

Reference: Canberra Times Sunday Edition

Return to the index...

This article has been viewed 2126 times.