Most of our pets died whilst we were on holiday!

[Ripeberry]

Hi, just got back from holiday and our neighbours had been looking after our 3 chickens and 5 cockatiels.
Went in the garden and noticed one of the chickens missing and all the cockatiels!
Neighbour came round, looking a bit upset and said that a few days after we left there was a lot of noise in our garden (cockatiels panicking), this was at 8pm at night.
They went into our garden and found on of our chickens flapping around the run with an obvious head wound and a cat running away.
The only thing i can think what happened was that because our cats were in the cattery, a feral cat that hangs around got confident and decided to attack the chickens and this chicken went outside making a racket and scared the cockatiels so badly that they all died of fright.
Because the next morning the neighbour found them lying on the floor of the aviary and one was clinging to the side of the wire stone dead.
Very sad as i'd seen those cockatiels hatched a few years ago and the oldest was only 10yrs old.
The neighbour had taken the chicken to the vets but they had to put it down, cost £50 though! They did not want to wring its neck as it was not theirs.
Anyway, my cats are OK and will keep that feral cat away.
Poor neighbour, everytime they look after our animals something happens, last time it was the fish that died!
AB

Maybe next time get the neighbours to look after cats too - which should keep feral cat away. Although, given their track record, perhaps that would be putting the cats' lives at risk.....

oh dear, I bet they feel awful, hope your lo's are not too upset! Maybe a seperate subject but £50 to put chicken down that is outrageous, I feel like starting a seperate thread. AIU to think vets fees are a bloody rip off! really winds me up, I used to think people became vets because they cared about animals not because it is such a lucrative profitable business.

for you ripeberry. What a horrible shock.

That must be horrible for you, ripeberry. A feral cat left one of our birds with a massive hole in her chest last year and left her there to die slowly after the cockerel and dog scared it off. Best layer too. Terrible that the attack affected all your other birds too though.

Your neighbour must feel awful but sounds like they did the right things in the circs. £50 is a shocker though isn't it!!

I felt very unlucky when I was at uni - any time my landlady went away and left me to look after her cats, one of them got ill or something happened to them. Once I even had to call her back from a holiday because one of her cats needed to be put down .