Universities are often a mixing bowl of unique and new people, ideals and ideas. This is all good and happy until some of this chaos starts to touch things from the outside world, like the innocents that our campus culture drags into its undertow, the stray cats and dogs that come for a few minutes of love, and stay because it's better than the cold of the professional world.
Those innocents, the cats and dogs of the college system, the "strays" that us, college students, look at and "awe" and pet over, are often not the beneficiaries of the happy life we think they have. They are often underfed, under loved and homeless creatures.
These animals face many challenges that we remain unaware of, your happy neighborhood kitty may be too old to be adopted, they might be too disease ridden to save, and often are too feral to tame for the home life that they all deserve. Even the rare brave cat or dog will only get a few pats a day, and maybe a little MacDonalds food. However, a little fast food and love a day is hardly enough for an animal to remain healthy, and turning them over to animal control will likely lead them to a tragic end, considering their age, health, and social levels.
So what can you do for the furry little ones we all have come to love and care for?
First, check the animal for signs of identification. Check for a collar, and contact the owner if you can.
Ask around the neighborhood and call local animal shelters and rescues to see if anyone has filed a missing animal report.
If the animal seems friendly enough, you could try to capture it and take it to your local vet to scan it for a microchip.
Set up flyers and put some free ads in the paper asking if the pet has a home.
If the animal has a tipped or notched ear, that means that the animal might be a spayed or neutered stray, otherwise known as a "community pet"
See this great article on caring for community pets!
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/feral_cats/tip...
If no one knows anything about the pet, or is willing to help, your best course of action is to either try calling one of the great community pet resources listed here,
http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/maps/feral-cat...
Or to ask around to see if anyone on campus is willing to give them pet a good home, or is willing to help you create a small (or large) community to help care for the pet on campus. You and your comrades can make sure that the pet is spayed, or nutered and has real cat or dog food, along with water, supplied to it every day.
this, along with routine checkups with a free clinic if you can find one (see the above link) should provide the pet with a healthy, happy life.
See below for a great example of when a campus pulled together to do this for their stray pets!
http://www.redandblack.com/uganews/campus-cats-alr...
Just like Red and Black.com says, these healthy community pets don't need a home, they already are home.
