A dear old lady with six cats of her own had been feeding a scruffy-looking stray and periodically trying to confine him to get him neutered. Finally he disappeared for several weeks and she assumed he'd gone off and died, but he turned up again last night, looking even more the worse for wear and blind in one eye. Claire drove over and took him to Vet24.
Sadly it turned out that he was a perfect example of why a "no-kill" shelter policy is not as simple as it may sound. If he'd had an owner able to give him tablets and a special renal diet there might well have been some point in having him castrated (so he'd no longer want to wander and fight younger, fitter cats), operating to remove the ruined eye and treating the eye with some remaining sight. As things were, it would have been simple cruelty to confine a cat like him in cattery conditions (most of the earlier to-ing and fro-ing on the old lady's part had been because she couldn't bear to shut him in her shed because he cried). She was in her eighties and wouldn't have been able to organise tablets and special diet. Euthanasia was really the only responsible option to avoid causing him more distress.
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