Drinks for my Neighborhood Friendly Feral Cat Colony

I've circled four of the usual feline suspects that haunt my backyard: from left to right, Calico with Black Eyepatch, Big Head Grey Cat, Orange Tabby, Grey Tabby.

That picture is from spring of 2024, but they all still are spotted in my yard even now in October. I call them my outdoor cats (as opposed to my indoor cats Jack, Jill and Sophie), and while they won't allow me to get near them, I'll still try to make their difficult outdoor feral lives a bit easier;

My local cat lady Linda down the street feeds all the colony cats (as well as housing her own animals), so I never worry about them getting malnourished. The neighbor barking dogs are kept at bay by my newly fixed fence, and the Cats can come and go unscathed via a slim pathway next to my back shed. Any attempts by me to feed the cats has only ended up feeding the Raccoons in my backyard instead. I've also seen a long-nosed white Possum scuttle through my backyard more than once. All I offer in my backyard is soft places to nap, no predator disturbances, and fresh clean water. I've spotted all the animals at the water dish for a quick drink of clean water.

Put a bowl of Clean Water outside of your place today!

Of course, as I post this, it's been an incredibly dry October for the Philadelphia region. While South Carolina gets nightmare floods and Florida gets weekly Hurricanes, we haven't gotten a drop of rain all month, and keeping dishes of fresh water outside is a blessing to all wild animals. I have a dish out front of my house as well, and see squirrels using it multiple times a day. All that food hiding is clearly thirsty work! This also drives the indoor cats insane when they see it, so there's two benefits!

While you have always had access to clean drinking water (apologies Pittsburgh, Detroit...), it's got to be very hard to find it outdoors. Rain water is made up of dirt to begin with, and it quickly evaporates. Puddles don't last forever, and sometimes natural bodies of water are impossibly far away. Animals can't use your hose tap like humans (but can be found drinking from sprinklers and fountains often). This simple act of filling a rarely used bowl full of water and putting it outside will be a wonderful blessing on local wildlife, including feral Cats, wild Birds, sneaky Raccoons (they'll empty the bowl nightly as they use water to eat), springy Squirrels, potbellied Possums, friendly Dogs, etc... It's a tiny effort, high reward, and you get to experience small wildlife coming right to your door!