Raised funds to shave Ivan and will also be bringing his bonded friend, Saguaro, to get neutered. I thought Saguaro was neutered because he has really small testies, so we'll see what the vet says, but I'll ask for an ear tip for better identification anyway.
I'll update will a poor shaved boy soon!
This guy comes to eat at my house and just noticed his paw today. It doesn't look right, he doesn't put a lot of weight on it but I don't think it's recently broken. I don't rescue these cats I just feed them and pet them when they let me. Should I do something? Take him to the vet or??
I think they are. Any other contenders??
(btw he got fixed today 🎉)
🐈⬛️ Meet Tom. He was/is my college campus' mascot cat. Recently, due to aging and slight health concerns, the decision was made to adopt him out. We (my organization) are in contact with potential adopters, but we're being very picky as he will need a diet and potentially yearly allergies shots if his allergies come back.
I have been fostering him for a couple of days, and he is literally the best cat I've ever had. I will miss him so much, but he yearns for the indoors and will love his forever home. Just wanted to share this celebration with y'all.
We're hosting a going-away party for him so the students can say goodbye. He is so loved and will be remembered by so many students.
I got my white whales, two of the big aggressive tom cats I've seen father a litter or two, the mamma who I have see with two litters... and then two others. I am so happy right now the hard part is done. They go in tomorrow morning. 🙌. This will make a total of 14 now.
There is one female in my colony who I swear was put on this Earth to test me. I have no problem baiting her into the trap, The issue is that Princess Houdini always manages to either teleport and/or witchcraft herself out.
She EXCELS at running into the traps, stealing the bait, then sprinting out before the door can fully close. I'm still not 100% sure how she pulls this off but so far she's managed to escape both a spring loaded Tomahawk (twice!) AND a gravity close TruCatch (too many times to count). I don't think the traps are the problem because they're well maintained and have caught literally dozens of other cats.
She is heavily pregnant right now and I (foolishly) assumed she'd be slow enough to catch this time. I was wrong. As I type this she is barricaded under a neighbor's porch, merrily munching on an entire leg of rotisserie chicken that she dragged out whole from the trap.
Everyone in my core colony is tipped except for her and a few of her kittens from last year. At this point the majority of the cats that I catch are tomcats from other colonies lured into the yard by her wanton wails.
advice? Are drop traps worth the investment?
picture of my tipped ladies in the snow for attention
Hi guys!
So we have a little feeding station/shelter for our neighborhood stray cats set up on our deck but its been taken over by this little guy. Although I personally find him very cute and would love to continue feeding him, my family does not want me to and from what I've researched raccoons can be dangerous to stray cats (?). At this point my family wants me to remove the food and shelter entirely to deter him. Any advice on what I should do? I dont want to put the strays that visit us at risk but I also feel for this guy :(
The lone tabby in my yard of orange and white cats. Roscoe has been MIA for me the past few weeks (I only feed three days a week) and I was so excited to see him.
He’s been here since 2020 and has hated me since day one ha. The other feeders have seen him over the last few weeks, so I knew he was fine.
More info: I have fed a feral cat for years as part of a group that feeds the same cat. My community has been feeding this cat for over 5-6 years. Based on an outside vet, he has cancer and there’s not really anything we can do except make him comfortable (as we can) and feed him. There are some people feeding and trying to take care of this cat. We cannot trap him. There have been a lot of politics around this cat and honestly we are so far past this but some of us have always wanted to best and tried to do the best by this cat. He has chosen my porch to be on - we leave food, water and literally an empty Amazon box he loves to sit on. We have a self heating pad he sleeps on too. Is there anything else we should be doing? To make him as comfortable as possible?
Fancy food, treats, etc are given.
A very friendly colony cat i call “best friend” had kittens on my side porch on Saturday morning. She became stressed (heavy panting) after a tomcat fight so i brought her inside my bathroom and she had two more kittens this evening! my question is how long do i keep her and the kittens inside before moving them back outside again? I set her up a liter box, food and water in the bathroom.
#kittens
So, we're getting pretty close to him being more comfortable with touch. I'm still letting him initiate everything and so far he'll eat from my hand with less hesitation, lick churu off a spoon with no hesitation, and yesterday i offered him my hand without a treat to take a little sniff. He did sniff it and put his nose on my hand for a few seconds which was good, and then he looked up and saw my face and backed up. This is a pretty common thing anytime he's touching my hand (eating treats, smelling, etc) as soon as he looks up at my face he runs. I've tried not looking at him so i won't be staring him in the face, which i think helped some of the time but i wonder if there's anything else i can do to help whatever the scary part is for him. Does he not realize my hand is attached to me and gets scared when he realizes? Does he think I'm ugly, lol? What exactly is he afraid of, and can I help at all or will he need to get over this on his own?
So… I’ve got an issue. We adopted a Feral Kitten (now named Fern) in December when she showed up on our front porch. The vet said she was about 10 weeks old when we found her. We started by containing her to her own room for the first couple of months before gradually introducing her to the rest of the house. We would go in and hang out and play with her throughout the day (all of us, husband, and 2 kids 7 &11.) We used a Feliway diffuser since day one and she never had an issue using the litter box.
She took to us well and became affectionate with us, but there has always been a limit before she would become spicy which we would always respect. We took socialization at her pace. We also started gradually introducing our dog who is around 15 lbs and 3-4 years old (also a rescue, very attached to us.) They were very interested in each other and would play. There were never really any issues with their interactions. She would always tell us/him when she was done but often tried to get him to play with her. Also, it became pretty clear in the last month of or so that my husband is very much her human. She likes the rest of us ok, but he is her favorite. (He’s also the only one of us who is actually allergic 🤣.)
Over the course of this time we also had her fixed and got her all of her shots. She had a persistent case of Giardia which we finally got under control. Her last vet visit was just about 3 weeks ago. During this time in her room she never peed on the bed in that room. We started letting her have full run of the house. Gradually at first but then eventually all day and all night except for feeding times. She started sleeping on our bed near my husband. The dog sleeps on my side.
About 2 weeks ago she peed on our bed in the middle of the night randomly. I got up to pee, and she peed in my spot. We thought it was a random one off thing because we’d tried moving her litter box, so we changed the sheets put the litter box back in its original spot and figured that was it. The next day it happened again and I caught her in the act. I realized the Feliway Diffuser was empty so we replaced it. She slept back in her room for a couple of nights. Someone suggested that we put her blanket on our bed and that she could be marking her territory because our bed smells like us and the dog who sleeps on there, but not her. So we tried that and let her back into our room. Things were good for about a week. Until a few days ago.
Over the last few days she has peed 3 times in our bed, always on my side of the bed. I think it’s territorial marking at this point. She was just at the vet and has had no signs of a UTI. We have the Pretty Litter stuff and there has been no abnormal pees. We are washing our bedding daily, so at this point we can’t keep going this way. Has anyone experienced this? I keep joking that she is mad at me because I sleep next to her man, but maybe there is something to that? Any thoughts on how we can get her to stop or do we just kick her out of the bedroom for good?
“She never lets anyone close to her” “She doesn’t like humans”
We thought she was feral. But maybe with a little patience, she could feel less fearful around us. When I finally got close with the help of lots of snacks, I noticed she was bleeding from her vagina constantly. I trapped her, took her to the vet, but turns out the vet had no experience with ferals so it was total chaos. He wasn’t able to see her, but he warned me about pyometra.
After a few days of failing, I trapped her again and went to a different vet. They understood that she was just afraid, and handled her perfectly. She got examined and spayed, pyometra gone. But I was worried that the week of constant trapping attempts and multiple vet visits would’ve broken our bond.
But I was wrong 🥹 ever since returning from spay, Tokyo has shown us that underneath the survivalist fear was one of the sweetest, most gentle loving cats. She LOVES human company and pets. Turns out as someone from this sub suggested - she was probably a kitten who got human touch and comfort early on, but unfortunately got abandoned and had to learn how to survive on her own, and was therefore fearful of humans. But from swiping at me to making biscuits on me, her socialization and survival journey have been nothing short of extraordinary. The goal was TNR, but now she’s stopped leaving the house and has claimed the backyard as her own, so we’ve officially adopted her, and she lives a comfortable, safe and enriched life at my mom’s house. She’s fully healed already been back to the vet to get her stitches out and get her first vaccine. She prefers the outdoors, but she’s slowly exploring indoor spaces too, we’re letting her move at her speed. In the meantime, does anyone have advice regarding peeing indoors for a cat that’s been outdoors her whole life? 😅
Long live Tokyo 🥹🎉🥂
Hi all! I thought id come poll the hive for some ideas on this one. For background, i have TNRd many cats now and have gotten pretty good at it. It rarely takes me more than 1-2 tries anymore.
That said, I am helping a neighbor with a few community cats at her house and the one has now gone entirely into the trap and ate all of the food on two separate occasions, but the trap will not trip.
She is very feral, so I cant stand and watch or hurry and trip it while shes in there because therr is no good place to hide and she will take off.
Thoughts on why the trap wont trip or what to do here? This is the first this has ever happened to me and im very confused lol!
There is this feral cat that's been visiting my place since a few weeks ago. I have been thinking about spray abort her but I am not sure what's their age since it is feral. Anyone can ID the ages of this cat in question? thanks.
We adopted a 1 year old female cat 6 months ago. Unfortunately, since she was new to the shelter, we had no idea how fearful she actually was. In bringing her home, we slowly discovered that she had no socialization at all and was extremely fearful. Over time, we've been able to transition her from the bathroom to the living room. She has a three story crate/safe space and comes out occasionally while we're watching TV to eat or look out the windows. She does not let us play with her or touch her yet; however, we noticed she's learning not to run from us and that we're safe.
We recently stumbled upon some kittens at an adoption event and fell in love with an 8 month old girl. We've heard that cats can improve with a companion and that it may help her socialization. I never expect our resident cat to be cuddly or affectionate, I just want her to be happy! And I'd hope that a kitten might be a non-threatening companion. I've done lots of research on slow introductions, scent swapping, and even have a play-pin coming for the kitten when we feel ready to bring her to the living room since I don't want to overwhelm our resident cat.
Just looking for any advice from some more experienced cat owners!
Lou has been spending more time outside of the cat tree, and not retreating when I enter the room so we had a little photoshoot. I’ve been giving him a lot of space and letting him initiate contact, which he does do ocassionally ( from the cat tree mostly ) but not as much as before all the vet visits. He’s coming back around though. Playing with a wand toy and giving him a treat when he catches it has been working wonders for his confidence I think. I decided to see if he’d retreat to his safe space in the cat tree if I laid on the other end of the bed and he was cautious at first but did settle in after a few minutes. I definitely think he was born on the streets but has been reliably fed by humans and had human contact throughout the years, he’s just not used to being indoors and he’s definitely a shy boy. I’m planning to sleep in the room with him the next couple of nights so he can really see I’m not a threat… hoping I’ll be waking up to him on the bed with me in the morning but it’s okay if not. We’ll see!
Last year, my husband and I were doing TNR work with a local rescue for the feral cat colony in our neighborhood. One day we successfully trapped a momma cat but that put us in a predicament because we desperately needed to find her kittens because they’d starve without her- which would’ve forced us to release her. We went outside and roamed everywhere looking- until we heard the faintest little meows under our shed. We figured they couldn’t see well yet because of how young they were so I had the idea of playing a momma cat meowing audio on my phone and holding it up to the burrow under the shed and it worked!! One by one all three of them waddled their way to the momma cat meows and we successfully saved them all. ❤️
Here’s some pictures of them and their momma. All 3 babies were successfully adopted to loving homes. My husband and I ended up adopted the momma cat because she formed such a deep bond with us. We thought she’d be a feral cat but she just needed some love and patience. We named her Marceline(from Adventure Time). 🐈⬛💜
I have two feral rescues, got them when they were 5months old and they've been living with me for almost a year, neither has even once shown any interest in me, like headbutting, sleeping with me, coming onto my lap, letting me pet them etc, those are all of the table, at first they showed some progress but for a while now nothing has changed.
I obviously still love them but I am worried they'll never change because they don't really have to since they have each other for company and no other tame cats to learn behaviors from, I've been thinking about getting a third one, like an already really friendly adult rescue or a small kitten for example.. But idk, I live in a small apartment and it would be nearly impossible to keep them separated if it didn't go well, and I realize I would be doing it just to get my cats to love me more or to at least get one that does, which feels selfish.
I rescued a feral cat on my property about a year ago. It's taken a long time to build up trust, but I trapped her, spayed her and ended up bringing her inside. Generally she is a pleasant cat despite being very skittish and introverted. She plays and allows gentle pets for short amounts of time.
She has some recurring eye issues that need treated. My vet keeps giving me drops to give her. It is literally impossible to give them to her, and I've told them this but they don't suggest any alternatives. I can pet her gently on her own terms, but if I approach her with a foreign object like a drop bottle, or a towel to try and wrap her up, she fights or bolts. It gets to the point where she makes me show her my hands before she approaches me to get petted. I've gotten some Gabapentin to try and mildly sedate her, but if she smells anything different in her wet food she refuses to eat it. I can't put any medicine directly in her mouth either, she runs away before I can get close. I'm so frustrated. I feel like a terrible cat mom. I'm afraid her eyes are going to be messed up but I can't do what needs to be done. Anybody have any unusual tips that aren't the typical ones that everyone says? I've tried them all.