'AITA for continuing to take my neighbor’s cats to the shelter?' 'She called me heartless.'
"AITA for continuing to take my neighbor’s cats to the shelter?"
I live on a farm, and my livelihood comes from producing foals (baby horses). It takes 11 months for a foal to gestate, and costs thousands of dollars just up until they’re born.
I’ve also worked extremely hard to turn my farm into a “nature reserve” of sorts. People travel from out of state to bird watch at my farm due to a number of rare/uncommon species that nest and visit (indigo buntings, American woodcock, to name a few).
Two years ago, I got a new “neighbor." She’s not directly next to my farm, but lives a little ways down the road. Prior to this we haven’t spoken and don’t know each other, and we also didn’t have any problems. This spring one of my mares aborted her foal, and a necropsy revealed it was due to toxoplasmosis.
If you don’t know, that comes from cats and their feces. I thought it was just bad luck, but more recently I’ve noticed a ton of cats on my property. It started off as just one, but now there’s 5-10 hanging out every night. They’re around so often that I’ve almost accidentally run them over pulling down my driveway, cause they’re too busy chasing birds or chipmunks to move out of the way of the truck.
So I started trapping them and taking them to the humane society. Every time I would trap a cat, a few days later it would show up again. I was baffled. Until my neighbor comes banging on my front door screaming at me that I better stop taking her cats to the shelter, and that she’s sick and tired of “paying their bail."
Apparently she put a collar on one of them with an air-tag or something, and it showed up at my place and she followed it and got it out of the trap. She tells me that she can’t afford to keep paying to get them back, and that she loves them and they’re her emotional support animals after her daughter died.
I told her that as long as the cats keep turning up on my property, killing the birds and making my horses sick, that I would keep trapping them until she either keeps them inside or runs out of money and can’t get them back. She called me heartless and has now started posting on our town Facebook page that I’m trying to kill her cats.
Some people understand where I’m coming from, and others say I should just try to chase the cats away or put up “cat proof fencing” around my pastures/property instead of “harassing an old woman." So, AITA?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
NovaByzantine said:
NTA Your neighbor is complaining about not having the money to keep buying her cats out of the shelter? Has she considered how her cats repeatedly coming onto your property endangers YOUR livelihood?
If she's had enough money to tag her cats and buy them out of the shelter repeatedly, she certainly had enough money to put up a fence on HER side of the property.
Also, not to downplay someone's trauma, but emotional support, animals? I've heard way too many people just dub any animal they have an emotional support animal, regardless of the impact it has, just to try and get away with obscene amounts of BS.
Ravyn4077 said:
NTA. If these were emotional support animals they'd be inside with her not running around causing all kinds of problems for local wildlife and (almost) getting run over. If you wish, on your town facebook I'd post about keeping cats indoors and the dangers of letting them outside.
Not just your opinions but like actual articles and studies on wildlife populations vs cats and cats lifespan vs outside. You should not conform your life to someone else's responsibility.
Relatents said:
NTA. You are being kind to those cats by simply catching them in humane traps. Not every neighbor would be that considerate. She thinks there is no problem with her cats coming onto your property and affecting your livelihood and harassing the birds.
Want to bet she’d have a conniption fit if you got a dog that came onto her land and harassed her cats? A couple of dogs may be what you need. They could be trained to ignore birds and horses, and chase all cats off the property.
Mobile_Run485 said:
She sounds like an animal hoarder. Report to city that her cats have the disease and get them to do a wellness check on her. If she stays, she needs a catio. Drop cats off at different shelters each time.
SnooAdvice2351 said:
NTA. Her companion animals are threatening your livelihood and the native wildlife. If she was that concerned about their welfare she wouldn’t leave them outside unsupervised. As they are freely roaming it is more than reasonable for you to catch them and take them to the shelter.
spekkje said:
If they are here emotional support animals why aren’t they with her emotional supporting her? Why does she let the cats run away? Instead of you putting up fences, she should do something to keep the animals on her property. NTA.