Maria Carmichael stated in the July 28 Observer that you cannot tame a feral cat. She is so wrong. In the 14 years that my husband and I have lived in La Grande we have not only fed the strays and ferals, but now have five cats, four of which were feral.

We found out almost immediately there was a huge problem here with ferals and strays. We live on South 12th Street and were told by our neighbors that people drive to the top of 12th, which turns into Bushnell, and dump their animals off. They figure this is the rich side of town and the animals will be taken care of. We are not rich but do what we can for the animals. We trap as many as we can, have them fixed, then release them, but the problem with that is they still don’t have homes, so still need to be fed. We also enjoy the other wildlife that is here, the squirrels, birds of all kinds and the city deer, so we have to tread lightly when feeding the ferals outside, because we don’t want to encourage them to kill the birds and squirrels.

Two of our ferals were kittens, so it was fairly easy to domesticate them. The other two ferals took time. The first one it took over two years before he started to trust us, but with patience and time he is now a domesticated loving boy. He still loves to go outside, but sleeps inside every night. The second feral showed up when he was just a kitten. We fed him for more than a year, but trapped him right away and had him fixed. With time and patience he is now part of our happy family. Only one of the five was a stray. He just came walking in the back door 10 years ago. No one claimed him, so we figured he was dumped off.

Nothing is impossible if you want it to happen. So to Carmichael’s comment that you cannot tame a feral cat, you probably couldn’t because you don’t want it to happen.

Jamie Thiesfeld

La Grande