In my own defense, if I need one, I didn’t decide to keep a 4th cat this week just because I wanted one - he actually plays a vital role in the kitty ecosystem.
Bert - who was still “young” in my mind and needed a buddy a year a half ago is now 10, and Bean - the kitten I kept to entertain him - is now too much for Bert to handle. I hear him quacking real loud and hissing at her when she’s bullying/chasing him.
The new guy is probably about 6 months old, and despite living in my dresser for his first few months here, he took to my residents like a fish to water. Bean started goofing around with him immediately. Bert licked him in the face. Goobs… is Goobs.
My current and previous HOAs have had a 2 pet limit. Neither seemed to be enforced, but assume if there was a pet hoarder in the neighborhood it would come up.
Did not vote because poll isn’t multiple choice, and I have multiple opinions.
At one point, I thought three was too many cats, but it was just the third cat. Cat moved out with the kid who adopted her, and we were back down to two, and that was not too many.
Then we bottle fed multiple kittens from feral litters that one of our other children found. We did not find “not ours” homes for most of them, so we have “too many” cats again, but the number is a lot higher than three.
I say we have “too many” cats, but I love every single one of them, and would not be happy to have any of them adopted now. They all have such distinct personalities and keep us laughing.
I was going to ask how can “None Cats” be too many but then I remembered I have none cats and there seems to be cats in my yard all the time. So I guess None Cats is a legitimate answer.
I think 4 is probably too many. I think with 3 I could love and enjoy them enough while also being able to take care of them. 4 though, it’s a little tough to imagine.
We have 1 cat now. Though there are 3 others that love to hang out in our backyard on occasion that don’t belong to us. It’s a happy medium.
From our experience, one cat is not enough so you need at least two cats. It might just have been that our first cat was a little bit off. Our two brothers are much better adjusted. I think a third would be fine but four would be too many. So 0, 2, or three is probably the ideal number of cats.
It’s been pretty heartbreaking watching them all go down one after the other - you can actually hear them swallowing/struggling to breathe/clearing their sore throats constantly. Lots of sneezing and runny eyes.
I actually hot boxed the oldest in the bathroom last night to make her more comfortable (the internet told me to do that).
I hate hearing about kitties struggling. That’s good about the hot boxing. They expend a lot of energy keeping warm I think. Doing that for them probably frees energy for their immune system to do it’s work.
