Quote:
Originally Posted by X5chemist
Friday, hand washed the X5. Noticed the front left wheel well had debris. Like icky and sticky strings. WTH....a critter was run over. I better check the engine bay. The neighbor hood does have stray cats. I had to use a brush and high pressure to get the icky stuff off....
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I'm an animal lover (people, not so much), so it isn't a good thing in my book to squash any critter. My semi-rural home has become a haven for stray cats (possums, raccoons, and neighborhood free-range chickens, too) over the past 7-8 years, after I started to feed a couple of stray cats that were living under my tandem axle race car trailer (and under a shed, in cold or wet weather).
As the cat colony grew, by more appearing and kittens being born, I bought traps to catch them, and have them spayed & neutered, so the colony has stabilized down to 8 stay-in-the-yard fulltimers, and 3-4 guest cats that appear at morning and evening feeding times
The funny thing about the guest cats, is that they have been spayed or neutered, too (you can tell because they all have a left ear point trimmed off by the vet). They must be cats belonging to nearby folks, and only come for the food. There haven't been any newborns in two years, so the neutering program works.
We've brought four sick ones inside (sharing the house with our three dogs and a parrot), that have remained inside as housecats for the past 3 years. The outside, semi-feral cats have various shelter spots around the property, for bad weather, and sometimes go into the massive Poultry Palace that my wife built for her four hens (they're now statring to fade away, so the Palace will be used as a Cat Corral, in the future).
The benefit of heeping the semi-feral cats (and possibly the 10-12 free-range chickens), is that the snake population has been eliminated or so reduced, that I haven't seen any trace of one for seven years. I used to have to take a flashlight, frog gig, machete, or pistol with snake shot outside with me at night, to remove venomous snakes from the yard, before letting the dogs out. I formerly had to dispatch at least 4-5 snakes (Cottonmouths and/or Copperheads) every year, for 25 years, before it was safe for the dogs. I also didn't much like stepping on one if I had to go into an unswept area.