Out & About San Diego — #3: Feral cats

A couple of years ago I went walking along the jetty where the San Diego River meets the Pacific Ocean and found a large population of feral cats living in the rocks. They were very well taken care of because there were dozens of food and water containers that had been set out for them. They weren’t feral cats at one point in the past, though. Instead, most of them were family pets.

In talking with many of the people walking on the jetty and watching the sun set, I found out that the population exploded during the past few years with the downtown in the economy and people losing their homes to foreclosure. People would abandon their pets there.

Note: Folks, if you don’t want your family pet or can no longer take care of it, please take it to your nearest no-kill animal shelter rather than dropping it off in an isolated location. That’s just plain cruel.

I go out to the jetty once a month just to take pictures of the many beautiful cats and wish that I could take them all home with me. Following are eight pictures from my most recent trek.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

All pictures taken by Russel Ray using a Canon 550D and post-processing using Corel PaintShop Pro X4.