Do not consign stray cats to a shelter! They need a home!

The Ethicist, writing every Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, emphasizes that animal shelters are not the place to take a cat found outside. He's quite right.

... before consigning a cat to a shelter, give the cat’s owner a chance to retrieve it. (This might mean posting fliers around the neighborhood.) Contrary to your assertion, cats may be better off at a shelter only in the sense that in this vale of tears we’d all be better off dead — such is the fate of many animals left at shelters without a no-kill policy. You must learn what your shelter does with a cat that is not promptly adopted and also confirm that the shelter screens adopters. Shelter cats have ended up with laboratories or with individuals who subject them to cruel fates.

Read more in his column today, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08wwln-ethicist-t.html. The Magazine does not usually wind up under my litter-box, so I need to read it in the living room.