Alley Cat Allies Says No to Relocation and I Agree

I just got Alley Cat Allies newsletter. I don't send them money. They operate a website, basically, and not much else that I know of. They highly paid people. I looked up their salaries. They still think I'm signed up with them as a "Feral Friend". Maybe they did not delete me as one, when I requested that and I will have to request it again.

If you're signed up with them as "Feral Friend" then any requests for help they get from your area, they refer to you to solve.

I don't like big organizations whose staff and leaders are highly paid to refer the real work out to little poor people doing the work completely unpaid. That is just wrong.

But, in this newsletter, they have an article on relocation and correctly advise against relocation. It rarely works to relocate a colony.

In fact, it is horrible on the cats. People think it's nothing, but think about being permanently ripped from everything familiar, all your haunts and hide outs, often to be unceremoniously dumped, without even being cared for, with reassurance, in confinement for a time, somewhere else. How would you like that?

Your friends are gone from your life forever. So is your family. You don't know where the food is, where it's safe, who is safe.

I also despise the practise of adopting out a single feral cat or a single house cat to live alone in a barn. That's despicable behavior. That cat is doomed to lonliness. Feral cats and cats in general are family oriented. People talk about a cat wanting to be the only cat. That's usually a cat seperated from all other cats at a young age, who ended up with issues, as a result.

There are some very unscrupulous cat groups who basically dump cats somewhere and call it relocation. Don't ever even think to hand off ferals to such groups.

They're as good as dead.

Alley Cat Allies is getting the word out, with this article, that relocation is a terrible thing on cats and often means the cats will die. I rarely get involved in relocation anymore and rarely adopt cats out as mousers.