1. In this thread at least, you didn't really explain what you do for the colony, and definitely didn't mention why.
2. I understand you get a lot of confrontational posts on these forums (and for good reason), but you need to be less defensive. I wasn't "calling you out" I was asking an honest question.
Usually if one is talking about a colony, rather than "I feed the cats outside"; they are talking about a registered (and thus protected) entity. I provided medical care and did spay/neuters/shots on all the cats I could capture.
To the why, I am not sure where it all started, but early on I developed an affinity for animals. My first word was "Buff" for my beagle named Buffy (much to my parent's disappointment probably). I never considered taking on a colony of cats, but I had mostly donated to animal charities as I grew up. My education is mostly centered around Zoology/Chemistry/Biology (7 years worth). Now things are tighter so at most I throw $10-20 on each week or so when I am at the pet store buying supplies. I have a family now and my fiancee is in the middle of what became an expensive divorce (due to the ex).
However, for this colony they house I bought was owned by the same family since 1969 and 1) they always had outside cats and fed their cats outside and 2) we have a school that backs up to our property with the cafeteria dumpster being directly behind my house about 100' or so. I had no idea until about a week after I moved in and there were cats on my roof, on my neighbors roof, in the trees and on my patios/decks waiting for food.
I thought not feeding them they'd go away. Instead every trash day (and even my covered cans) would be raided by them all up and down the block. On trash days, there would be a cat or two often dead in the road.
Once I started feeding them, the trash was left alone. As I started spay/neuters the colony would dwindled down (people would still kill them/hit them with cars though), sadly many people had cats they let outside that were not fixed. I got one of them fixed not knowing it was someone's cat and they tried to stir up trouble, however; what I did was totally legal and it just became a pissing match until their landlord threw them out for having too many pets (the irony).
At the peak, I was going through 17 cans of Friskies per day plus about 1.5 bags of Kirkland Cat Food at $16/bag a week. Medical would run $100-1000 a month. Like I said, two years ago I had $10,000 in expenses/donations that could have been write offs, but it wasn't enough to make itemization worth it.
Most here choose to attack me and no matter how right I am or factual, declare absurdity or say I am making things up. Don't take it as defensive, it's more 'that is my final answer' response.
I eventually trapped the opossum or one anyway and was going to kill it, but I felt bad and drove it far away and let it go. I gave away the remainder of the chickens.
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