This is all really helpful. Basically we are renovating an old barn and have over an acre of land. At the bottom we plan to have a vegetable patch and orchard so what I can plan in is a shed which could also act as a 'rehabilitation unit' for the females.
To kickstart my resuce antics we had a meeting with the major (who thinks i am a little crazy but can see the benefit to the local area) and what we are looking at is initially a 'fund' to help locals pay to neuter their cats (lots of people take kittens and strays in but dont really have the money for vet fees). We will act as a pick up and drop off for the cats to our local vet (who will only charge us a basic price for the operation and will do a check up for free!). The Major will let us use the local village hall to do a fundraiser, we are planning on one for the autumn where i plan to do an english night (locals love the brits here!) he asked if we could cook a steak & kidney pie with mash and sticky toffee pudding and custard for desert - easy peasy
So this should help start raising money to treat residential cats who to be honest are as much of a problem as the feral colonies. I will probably reinstate petmillions pet contest to help raise money and target expats as well as other brits back home.
Is this a true fact? If one cat is allowed to breed and all the kittens from that cat are allowed to breed in 7 years you will have 21,000 cats.
We will start with the fund raisers and then can look at the trap and neuter next year once we have the rehabilitation side setup as I now see this is key. Dawn it will be great if you have a link for the traps - we are having out stuff shipped out soon and want to get a couple of traps sooner rather than later.
I have to do something otherwise I will become the crazy cat woman of france!