Kitties in New Jersey

While New Jersey is an expensive state to live in, the actual area I was in last week is about as reasonable as you’ll find in the state. That meant my per diem for hotel was a measly $70 per night (I work on a government contract). You can’t find much for that price and so the best of the bad lot was the Days Inn in Bordentown.

Directly behind the hotel, the land fell away into a ravine with a creek at the bottom. It was pretty wooded and overgrown, plus people used it as their personal dumpster. It was also the home of at least three cats.

I saw them when I drove in and out of the hotel parking lot, and got slightly close to one of them before the rain drove me inside (the picture is from the hotel and I'm pretty sure that "feature" isn't supposed to be in the middle of a moat). But I didn’t get any kitty pictures; they were feral and wouldn’t let me get very near them. They were interested in me, and would stop moving away if I stopped moving toward them. I think the gray tiger with creamy blotches was the mother, although she had to be a pretty young cat herself. The other two were tuxedo kitties; those two were about the same size and smaller than the first, and all three sort of hung out near each other. They had tiny bodies with small heads, much like the feral cats I saw in Hawaii.


Our kitties bring Kent and me so much joy by living with us; when I see feral cats like these in New Jersey or the ones in Hawaii I get a bit sad. I can guess that someone somewhere dumped a cat who got pregnant by another feral cat and boom! You have a feral cat colony, living short lives, getting run over or killed by equally feral dogs or whatever and generally becoming a nuisance.

I don’t understand people who don’t get their animals fixed and I definitely don’t understand people who just dump pets somewhere else if it doesn’t work out for them. At least the person who dumped Wally and Eddie did so at our vet’s which gave them the chance to be found by someone who wanted them.