98 posts tagged “feral cats”
Back out trapping tonight and after a real nail-biting time watching the little brown tabby nibble his/her way toward the trap (kittens have such little mouths it takes them so long to eat anything), and then watching him/her go halfway into the trap, then back out, the kitten went back in and tripped the trap!
I'm still calling him/her Mouse. And Mouse went straight up to Joyce's place, where she will be foster mom. I can't go out for the other two for a couple more nights, so Mouse will be on his own for a little while. Mouse is already very placid -- no hissing, scratching or doing that whole ball-of-razor-blades thing some feral kittens do.
And now, the obligatory photos:
Joyce and I went out trapping in the evening. We saw more of the adult cats this time, and set a separate dish of food down way off to one side for two of the most persistent, to keep them away from the kitten trap. The orange/white one poked his/her head out again, but the one we saw most of was the tabby. S/he came out and nibbled at the little trail of food we had leading to the trap, and we held our breath, hoping s/he'd have enough appetite or curiosity to actually go into it.
This cat looked like a little mouse (bat earz notwithstanding), so now I'm thinking of him/her as Mouse.
But then, this little suspensful scene was interrupted by a loud truck with loud people in it pulling up to the curb and talking loudly with a loud person on the sidewalk. Which scared the kitten back under the fence, and Mouse didn't show up again the rest of the time we were there. Thanks a lot, guys.
I'm planning to try again tonight.
Well, after doing so well, catching three kittens in 10 minutes a week and a half ago, this morning, at one of my colonies, two of us were out there to trap three kittens, and after an hour, came up with bupkiss. No resting on laurels here.
We did clap eyes on two of them, here's a picture of one of them looking at the trap, all "I don't think so."
These guys are five weeks old. One other poked his/her nose out from under that piece of fence, but after the first ten minutes, they disappeared, and we didn't see anything more of them, or any of the half-dozen adult cats, who usually show up when we're trapping. Despite all our efforts to coordinate non-feeding with the people in the two buildings this little piece of alley is between, I think the cats still weren't hungry.
Came back home and put a tote bag with some of my trapping kit on the kitchen counter for a bit. Went back to the kitchen a little bit later to find my cats had torn into the bag of catnip we've sometimes used for bait, and scattered it all over the counter and kitchen floor. Bills and receipts I had on the counter had green slobber on them, and if you think I had trouble keeping my cats off the counter before, oh, man. Even though I've wiped the counter and floor down, you know they're going to keep going up there looking for catnip.
I didn't get a photo of that little mess, but I did get this photo yesterday after I did the kitten photo shoot on my bed. I think the message here is "We're ready for our closeups."
OMG, Sophie got out of the cage *again* at around six this morning. I had been up at 5:30 to have a pee, and then just as I was dropping off to sleep again, I heard noises from the recovery room, so I got up to check. I have no clue how she did it since I secured every slight gap I could find. Which means it must have been even harder for her to do. Since today was her scheduled release day anyway, I put her in a carrier and went back to bed.
Today's a day off for me (Canada Day is tomorrow, and rather than come in for one day, then be off for Tuesday, the boss gave us Monday for a freebie to make a really long weekend). I'd been planning to use both these days for doing the edits on my novel, starting at 10 this morning, but two of the kittens have diarrhea, it's stinking up my bathroom no matter how often I clean the litter pan, and since my time is more flexible today, when I finally got up late, I called the nearby vet. They had a 10 a.m. appointment or 1 p.m. "I'll take the 10 o'clock," I said, seeing it was 9:42, and not wanting to break up my writing day in the middle. I had been up for ten minutes, my own cats had been fed, though Tumbleweed was still shut in the pantry with his wet food, and hadn't even peed or washed or eaten. I threw some clothes on, peed, stuffed the kittens in a second carrier and flew out the door at a brisk walk for the vet (10 minutes away), leaving Tumbleweed in the pantry, with apologies. I had originally planned to take and release Sophie on the way, but she would have just slowed me down, so I left her, too.
The kittens were very well behaved, and everybody cooed over how cute they are. I left so fast I forgot my camera, so no cute "at the vet" phots. The vet estimated them at 8 weeks old, old enough for their first shots. They got the shots and a dewormer for their diarrhea. The kittens are all male, and their names are now on the record as:
long haired orange = Butterscotch
long haired brown tabby = Chocolate Chip
medium haired brown tabby/white = Fluffernutter
Oh, and major milestone -- I got them purring yesterday. Yay!
Then, once I got home (Tumbler had been in the pantry an hour by then, and was still picking at his food), I had to go back out to release Sophie, who shot like a bullet (as they all do) out of her carrier. Now, I've finally had some food and am about to start the work I originally planned to start at 10. It's now ten to one. Sigh.
I put gooshyfood down for the kittens for dinner. This is what happened.
The smallest one (or at least, she looks smallest because she's not as floofy as the others) immediately started hogging the bowl. Check out the paw flung over the dish to keep other cats away. Check out the claws, which are out on that paw. What you can't hear is the growling, which kept up the whole time she was eating. This is how you get along in life when you're a feral kitten.
The orange kitten was first at the bowl, and has already left the frame, recognizing the futility of trying to butt back in, You can see the resigned look on the brown tabby's face. We all had to wait for Miss Mine-All-Mine to eat her fill, then I had to fill up the dish again, because she'd left so little, and the other two shared it.
Aside: nothwithstanding that the brown tabby/white mix is the least floofy of the three, I'm starting to think of her as Fluffernutter.
So. There was the escape artist momcat (Sophie) that we trapped on Sunday. She has three kittens who did not get trapped at the same time. This is the area they hang out in.
Momcat would come daily onto the concrete pad to eat (food would be pushed under the fence). The way we got her on Sunday was by making sure no food was there earlier in the day, then at the usual feeding time, we showed up, let her see we had food, and then set the trap up on the ground below the concrete pad. She deked out another part of the fence, then came around the side of the greenspace to come around front and went in the trap. Great.
Thursday. On previous days we'd seen the kittens playing on the edge of the concrete, beyond the fence on the far side.
Turns out we didn't have to. My friend and I arrived at the front space, which is hidden from the sidewalk by a row of trees, and prepared to use it as a staging area. We had two kitten traps, momcat in a carrier, and another carrier for the kittens, and all my other trapping gear. But we stepped past the trees and immediately saw all three kittens in the front area, mere feet away, on our side of the fence. Lying on, or hiding behind various construction supplies.
I walked straight over to one sitting on a four-foot-tall roll of flexible mesh and grabbed it, bare handed, just that quick, before he could scamper off on the irregular surface. Stuffed it in the carrier. Then, with the other two still watching us, as quickly and quietly as we could, we set up the two kitten traps, and momcat in her carrier behind them. I also baited the traps with food in case the mom didn't call them. Throughout, my friend was worried that the kittens would bolt, but I was sure they wouldn't. We'd called someone to take any food away in the morning, and I knew they were hungry.
Traps set, we went back past the trees to watch from the sidewalk. It took only a couple of minutes before we got this
We had all three kittens in about five minutes. Now that's trapping!
Here are the little fuzzbots in my bathroom.
We caught the momcat last night, and saw all the kittens (and another adult cat, too), but the kittens didn't come near to where we could put the trap. (We have to put the kitten trap on the outside of the chain link fence and hope they will go under the fence and then into the trap. They do go under a different part of the fence regularly -- to another inaccessible area, so that part at least is not an entirely new concept.) The kittens may be unfamiliar with associating that spot on the concrete pad with food, so we left a good bit of food there last night for them, and I'll try again tonight. Mom (Sophie) will get spayed on Wednesday. When transferred to the cage from the trap last night, she came right to the front of the cage, and took a few pats on her head. But this morning she was acting all scared and feral, so I doubt she'll be a truly tame one. With foster homes so scarce on the ground, I'd rather we focused on the kittens, anyway.
Today held some unexpected cats. I went to the annual general meeting of Annex Cat Rescue and someone there had brought a kitten she's fostering who is less than two weeks old, and wasn't nursing from the mom she's also fostering (and the rest of the litter). The kitten needs to be fed every two hours, so got brought along in a box. And got cooed over, and snuggled and cuddled in someone's shirt for most of the meeting.
After the meeting, a friend and I went to do reconnaissance on a location where I'm supposed to go trapping tonight for a feral momcat and her two kittens, a brown tabby, and a brown tabby/white mix. It's a tricky location, and lots of fences that we can't get past to get to them. A food bowl is easily stuffed under the botton of the fence, but a trap? No dice. These photos were taken through a chain link fence that encircles this concrete pad. As we were studying the location, I spotted kittens on the other side of the pad. (That greenspace behind them vacant and overgrown, but also fully fenced and locked.)
But wait a second.
Yup, a third kitten, a type I think of as Creamsicle, because it's orange and white.
Little orange dude came out on the concrete pad, playing around with a plant stem.
Mom watched from the sidelines. (I know, bad photo.)
So, the trapping job is a little bigger than we thought. As is the job of finding a foster situation for these little fuzzbots, since there's one more than we expected, and the usual places are all filled up. In our rescue group alone, there are 90 kittens at present.
We may not even get to trap tonight. I'm due there in 45 minutes, and there's a big, messy blob of rainstorms heading right for Toronto looking like it's going to hit right about then.
Can you stay grumpy while looking at these photos?
