There's a heavily traveled 2 lane highway around the corner from me. There's a house that has free kittens 6 months out of the year. They have a big sign in front of the house that says "free kittens" and their land line phone number. I can only imagine someone calling to see if anyone is home and breaking in. My friend tells me that I'm too paranoid and I watch too many scary movies. What do you think? Are they asking for trouble?

Personally, no, I wouldn't worry about that. Not at all.

All one would need to do to accomplish what you are suggesting is pull out the phone book, randomly pick a phone number, and call it. In our phone book, the address is listed right there beside the number, so based on your theory, someone could just make a call to a randomly-chosen phone line, and if there was no answer, go to the adjacent address and break in.

In theory is it possible? Sure. But of all the stories I've ever heard about people having their houses broken into, a publicized land line number has never been the catalyst.

I think thieves tend to either A) hit houses where they specifically know there is something valuable to be stolen, or B) hit houses they have been staking out and have determined when the owners will be away.

I'm more concerned over the fact that they need to have their cats spayed/neutered!!!!!

Although what Wow says makes sense I would never do that if I lived near a major highway. Theft is a crime of opportunity. The odds are slim that they would hit a random house however it's still there. And if it looks like they might have nice tvs or nice stuff the odds are higher.

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The political system is broke and it's a joke.

I think getting burgled might make them decide to put mama cat out to pasture with a nice visit for spaying. People that stupid deserve to get burgled.

I think it's a bit harsh to call them stupid.

She said the house is out on a highway. Perhaps these are farm cats.

Our cat is the 'child' of a pregnant mother cat - a stray - that showed up at the farm of one of my daughter's friends. They kept the mama cat, but didn't need her babies and gave them away.

Nobody was stupid. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Well if they have kittens six months out of the year they are doing something wrong.

And did your daughter's friend get mama spayed? Or did they let her continue to breed?

I don't know about the phone number, but giving away kittens to whoever calls you is stupid, and so is not spaying your cat. Barn cats should be spayed too.

According to humane society statistics:

The average number of litters a fertile cat can produce in one year is 3.

The average number of kittens in a feline litter is 4–6.

In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can theoretically produce 420,000 cats.

Only 1 in 12 of those 420,000 cats born find a home.

Even if you found homes for all your cats, you are still taking away homes that other homeless cats could have had by adding to the population.

There are no excuses for your allowing a cat to have kittens.

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If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

- Stephen Colbert.

Ah - sorry! I missed the "six months out of the year" part.

I have no clue if they got her spayed, but I doubt that they did. She died of something not long after that litter of kittens was given away.

The kitten we got followed in her mother's promiscuous footsteps. She was just over three months old and was a house cat that had never been outside unattended during the short time we'd had her. We had plans to get her spayed at around 5ish months. We have no other cats, so it wasn't as though she was going to get pregnant in our house, but it was still our plan to have it done.

My youngest child (who was around 5 years old or so at the time) didn't shut the back door well, and before we noticed it, our 3ish month old cat escaped. We spent the evening calling for her, worried she wouldn't come home. But there she was in the morning, just as we were loading our luggage in the car for a ten day trip. We had a neighbor lined up to look after her in our absence.

Her one night on the town at that young age was all it took. She was knocked up, something that became apparent soon after we returned from our trip.

She gave birth to three boys and a girl. My brother took the boy, got him fixed, and keeps him indoors. A friend took the girl and another of the boys. Sadly, the girl died from a reaction to anesthesia when they were getting her spayed. They still have the boy - he's an inside cat. And the family that gave us our kitty took the remaining boy. He became a mouser in their barn. I have no clue if he is still alive or not.

That was about eight years ago. We still have ours. She's in excellent health and very attached to her people. She spends 90% of the time 'in' and about 10% 'out'... and yes, she has absolutely been spayed! One litter was plenty.