Terrible cruelty inflicted on cats in Tipperary
Terrible cruelty is being inflicted on the feral cat population in Tipperary because of a failure of cat owners to neuter their pets, according to the Tipperary Friends of Animals.
Julie O' Keeffe, who runs a dog grooming and cattery in Carrigatoher, Nenagh, said there were large numbers of feral cats in the Nenagh area that suffered terrible pain and disease for want of treatment.
"These feral cats are everywhere, and they go through all types of suffering with females having many litters,"says Julie.
"At the moment I am keeping 14 cats for the Tipperary Friends of Animals, including one that has lost a leg due to being caught in a trap. It's easy to find homes for the kittens but not so for adult cats," says Julie who works as a volunteer with the Friends.
Friends Chairperson, Linda Hehir, echoes the above sentiments: "The sitaution with cats in particular is terrible," she says. "Female cats that are not neutered will have two to three litters of kittens every year. They start getting pregnant from about six months when they are still only kittens themselves. It's very hard on them."
Linda says the situation is no better for unnutered male cats. "Male cats that are not neutered go off wandering for females in heat and get into terrible situations. They end up being bitten by other male cats when fighting over females in heat and they can die from their wounds if not treated. They get killed and injured on the roads and attacked by dogs, and they pick up diseases from other cats."
Neutered cats are more likely to stay at home and be more relaxed, she asserts, urging owners to now avail of a new low cost neutering scheme that is available to those on social welfare and on low incomes.
Linda reveals: "In Tipperary Friends of Animals we have always done neutering vouchers for people on social welfare and low incomes, but now we have a new scheme where we are offering them at a rediculously cheap rate – in fact I believe we now have the best scheme in Ireland.”
Under the fantastic scheme, owners in the above income categories can have their male or female cat neutered for just €20 with the two patricipating vetinerary practices in Nenagh, Summerhill Vets (067-31248) and A Country Practice (067-33725). Brittas Vets in Thurles (0504-24401) also continues to offer the service for the €20.
TRAPPING SERVICE
A big part of the Friends works is providing a free feral cat trapping service. The cats are then brought to the vet where they are neutered and innoculated. The trapping keeps Linda and fellow volunteer Audrey Hughes "very very busy", such is the problem with the numbers of cats that remain unneutered.
Says Linda: "These cats are everywhere, and they are not tame enough to catch by hand. These are either stray feral cats or cats on farmyards that farmers cannot catch. We always hope that that people who avail of this service would make some contribution to the organisation for the time we spend trapping."
On the week Linda spoke to this newspaper, the friends had just visited a local farm where they trapped ten cats.But she says she and Audrey have being called out to jobs where they have trapped over 20 feral cats at a single site. This, she says, is an indication of just how bad and out of control things can get when owners fail to neuter the one cat they started off with initially.
Compounding the problem, she says, is that, unlike dogs, there are no publicly run pounds for unwanted cats in Ireland. This means the Friends have to depend on the generosity of people like Julie O' Keeffe who takes in unwanted feral and injured cats to her cattery in Carrigatoher.
The Friends also respond to calls from the public in relation to injured cats that people come across.
And, of course, unwanted dogs are also a big part of their workload, and they also take in injured wildlife such as birds, including swans and hedgehogs. "We bring these wild animals to the vet for assessment. If they are very badly injured they are put to sleep, but we also send wild animals to rescue centres," says Linda.
Linda is urging owners to neuter both their cats and female dogs so as to reduce the number of unwanted animals that exist in every county in the country. Under the above new scheme, female dogs are being neutered for just €50.
All this work is very costly, even despite that fact that most of the people who work with the Friends do so as volunteers. In the current year the Friends received an ex-gratia allocation of €8,000 from the Department of Agriculture. But this sum does not nearly go near meeting its yearly running costs of around €90,000.
Says Linda: "The main source of our income is from our charity shop at Friar Street, Nenagh. We do a sponsored dog walk in May, church gate collections; we receive donations from people and some people do standing orders with us."
But she says that without the income from their Nenagh shop they would not be able to do the great work that the do.
"The shop brings in most of our money, so we would urge people to support it by making donations such as clothes, books, bags, and household goods, such as ornaments, furniture," says Linda.