Helpful neighbor fail. Apparently there were many 'stray' cats wandering their hood, so they gathered them all up, put them in carriers and took them to the vet to be spayed. Vet shaved their bellies and discovered they all had the tattoo stripe indicating they'd already been spayed. Oops - but Vet had to charge for all of them.
Meanwhile, another neighbor said, "There's some kind of psycho around here - they've been catching cats and shaving their bellies!"
My bro's living in Spain and there they have a fair amount of stray cats as well. Which then got kittens, then.. then.. yeah. My bro decided to do something about it.
He managed to capture a few strays with their litters. And when they were old enough, he brought them to the vet. The strays who got spayed would get a cut in their ear. Left for male, right for female, or other way around, don't recall. It turns out to be pretty customary over there.
So if you'd see a stray with a specific cut in their ear you'd know they're already spayed and you don't need to take action. Maybe a good idea to introduce this idea over there?
@cajun_cheechako Considering the neighbor fail... probably not. 😅
@trinsec my brother mentioned that they also do that here, but not sure if it's universally practiced.