Free Kittens

On my drive home tonight, I passed a hand-written sign that said "Free Kittens to GOOD HOMES only."

That got me wondering about their definition of "GOOD HOME". A random person, coming upon their sign, might stop their car, knock on their door and request a free kitten with the rational that they live in a very nice home. In fact, they have a home with five bedrooms, a kitchen with stainless steel appliances and wonderful landscaping.

Maybe they mean to say something more along the lines of "Free Kittens to a family who will take good care of them, including getting them fixed, feeding them, making sure they get their shots each year, taking care to ensure they don't get infested with fleas, and giving them plenty of love."

But then they would have needed a bigger sign. Perhaps they were short on cardboard the day they made the sign.

A bit down the road, I came across another hand-made sign that said "Free Kittens". I guess those people don't care if their kittens get a "good home".

In both cases, there are probably two different choices of sign verbiage that would be more accurate.

1) We're too lazy to get our cat fixed so we need to get rid of this season's litter of kittens. We really don't want to take them to the humane society because we're pretty sure they'll put them to sleep. At least if we give them away, we can console ourselves with the false hope that they will be well taken care of by some random stranger that just happens to be driving by this sign.

2) Another careless person dumped their pregnant cat here at our country home thinking that we'll take it in and care for it, and its kittens, because we have a nice home. Sure, we've fed them, but we're not willing to go the extra step to get the kittens fixed before we dump them on someone else. Why should we? They're not really ours anyway.

I did a Google search for Free Kittens after I got home and came across a website of a woman who is actually doing something when she comes across "Free Kitten" signs.

And, now I'm going to do some research to see if there's a low-cost spay/neuter program in our area. And, if there is, I'll print out some information about them and stop by the next "Free Kitten" sign I come across to see if maybe I can help help lessen the number of unwanted pets in this area. Okay, maybe I'll just leave the flyer in their mailbox. You never know how strangers are going to react to confrontation.