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But watch what a feral cat does when you put him or her inside a house where, as we believe, it is surely more comfortable.
Ha!
I've had to do that of of necessity at times (recovering an injured one, or housing one threatened with death at its former place of residence). I quite clearly remember the one with two stumps for back legs (she'd been born like that, apparently) going straight up the walls, showering pee all over us as we tried to wrangle her back, and biting the towel we wrapped her in as if she trying to protect herself from murder. I really thought she'd have a heart attack. Ugh. She was much, much happier in her parkinglot.
You are so right. One time I spent two days trying to get an all black feral kitten of maybe 7 or 8 weeks old to trust me. Finally, I had an open shot at grabbing it. I thought "Do I ruin the trust I've built and grab it? Or do I spend a few more days trying to persuade it?" I decided to go for the grab. No gloves. Big mistake. I was astounded at the strength and ferociousness of that kitten. She scratched and bit the hell out of my hand, as I held on, bleeding. She clearly thought she was fighting for her life. I switched hands, and held a can of food up for her. She bit the can. Put teeth marks in it.
I finally did tame her after about three days of wooing her with food, string, and toys. All the while she eyed my right hand warily, as if it were an independent entity that had attacked her. Up to that time, just when it looked like she trusted me again, if I tried to touch her, she'd hiss and run away. Finally while she was eating, I came to another "do I or don't I" crossroads. Should I pet her from behind while she wasn't looking? Again, I decided to do it. This time it was the right decision. This kitten who had never been petted in her life absolutely reveled in the feel of being stroked. It was like the greatest thing she'd ever felt. Instantaneously, she rubbed against me, crawled on my lap. She was all mine. Until the next day when I went out to see her. Then it was back to the hissing and fear. But I got to petting her again. After that, the intervals got shorter and shorter until she became fully domesticated. I gave her away out of consideration to my other female cat, a decision I have regretted ever since.
Be very careful with a feral cat. Not only can they be vicious, they can also carry lots of disease. If you are determined to tame them and I am not so sure you can right now, you are going to have to lure them into a cat carrier somehow. If you try to pick them up, you could possibly get hurt. Feral cats sometimes never get "tamed", depends on the animal.
Just be very, very careful and go slow at getting them to trust you. I then suggest you be sure to have a cat carrier handy. If you do get them in the carrier, the first place they should go is to the Vet.
Be very careful with a feral cat. Not only can they be vicious,
There is nothing vicious about a feral cat. A feral cat will act defensively, yes - but it is because a human is doing something that goes 100% against the instinct and rules by which it lives - namely: a human is trying to handle it. They are merely reacting and trying to get as far away from humans as possible.
In such a situation, they're running on PURE fear. Nothing more, nothing less.
I'm in a very similar situation. I feed them and provide a little shelter they rarely use, water which they do (and half and half which they love). I worry about someone in my apt complex turning me in.
I actually trapped one female and got her fixed (cost me a fortune). Have contacted various TNR support groups but while its a great thing it can be hard logistically. Here at least they don't do it for you. You can borrow traps and its on you. They have set times for you to bring a cat in - what if there's no cat in the trap? Ok, slip to the next month! Or if a cats preggers, or nursing - do you take the cat in anyway and let the kittens starve for a few days (pregger cats, kittens are removed and euthed). What happens after - you don't want to let a cat go right away after surgery, at least not the females. I didn't have a garage so I kept the cat in an xlarge dog crate I still had. After 4 days I shoved the crate to the open door to the back (and she knew when she smelled her environment and was ready to go) and opened her door.
But had I been on the second floor - I couldn't have put her in the dog crate cuz I couldn't have got her back out, the hav-a-heart trap - uh, can't use that for 4 days.....
It gets hard and I sympathize entirely.
I generally have a mix of one or two abandoned cats and true ferals.
The two abandoned cats have shown absolutely no desire to be re-domesticated. They will let me touch them sometimes, even pet them a little. But if I pick them up they fight me. Once I carried one in the apt - absolutely no way - he ran right out again. Leaving the door open = no interest.
Periodically one disappears for good, dead somewhere no doubt. Once in awhile they reappear. I have no idea what's going on. One big old tom I did watch die a rather horrible death (not to the last minute or anything but he was sick, lost an eye, it was so awful). If I could have trapped or caught him I would have had him put down out of mercy. But at least his last few months he had regular chow (with his one last canine tooth left)
So I feed them and worry about population growth and do the best I can hoping it doesn't get too out of control.
I just know that if my life was 10 years long, being hungry and struggling for 8 or 9 years (I've been feeding for a little over a year) would be better than hungry and struggling for the whole 10.
Any day not hungry is better than a day hungry.
You do what you can and its better than nothing.
If you can get a racoon trap and find a TNR type program that does cheap neuters that would be great.
Honestly I've been watching this little colony for over a year and they seem pretty happy. And amazingly they are generally pretty healthy and sleek. They seem to have "friends", i.e. some cats seem to hang around each other on a regular basis, and a structured "culture". They play, they interact. Its been interesting and educational to watch.
My apt back door is mostly glass. Numerous times I will look over while I'm watching tv and find one or two cats watching me or the tv. Touch the door knob and they scatter.
I have an approximately eight-year-old neutered male cat. He sleeps pressed against either me or one of my two dogs. He insists on being hand fed his treats every day. He likes nothing better than to be stoked and have his head rubbed.
But a little over a year ago I couldn't get within five feet of him after I trapped him and brought him in. There was blood spattered on the wall in a place where I tried to pet him. He used to walk towards me acting as if he wanted to disembowel me. I called a number of self-appointed experts on feral cats. They all told me that I'd made a terrible mistake and that he would never make a pet and should be put out.
I moved into a house where he was living under a porch . I fed him and I knew that he could get under a floor where there was a heat leak. But I also knew that it was just a matter of time until something happened as there was a colony of Great Horned Owls nearby. I could hear them at night. so I set a live trap and caught him in just a few minutes.
Then I made a big mistake. I was busy so I decided to take him to my vet the next day. I had another cat, and not wanting to risk transmission of disease, I put him in a room with some places he could hide and be comfortable. But I couldn't get him to go into the trap again. So he lived there until I was ready to move. This time I ignored the advice to put smelly fish into the trap. I put in dry food, which was all he ever wanted to eat. It took almost three days, but he finally went in. I got him to the vet for vaccinations, neutering, and an examination.
He stayed at the vet until I was ready to move, and from there he went to the new place. I kept him in a room for two months until one day he zipped out of the room to hide someplace in the house. I didn't see him for five months. I knew that he was eating and using his box, so I knew that he was alive. Then one day I saw him in a window from the outside. Soon, he was always in a windoe watching the dogs and me when we were out. Then I saw him run under the bed. Then, finally, he was standing on the kitchen counter one day while I was fixing the dogs' breakfast. I summoned the courage to touch him. He backed off a bit, but made no hostile move. He was letting me pet him the same day, and the rest is history.
Have patience and don't push them. They'll figure it out.
He does not miss the wild. Once he dashed out on to the porch, looked around and ran back in. Another time I was looking at a fastening on the front door and he walked out. I didn't see him and closed the door, but opened it again as he wasn't standing inside. He came in so fast that I could hear him bang the side of the door.
Gotta reiterate what Five Horses said. There is nothing mean or vicious about a feral cat. It is a fear reaction. When you grab a feral, they are fighting for their life and if they can get away from you instead of fighting tooth and claw, they will! In their eyes you are trying to murder them.
They're also no more contaminated than your average indoor-outdoor cat (and not much more than your average indoor-only cat either). Cat bites are dangerous due to the kinds of bacteria they have in their mouths, it's true. All moderate-to-severe bites I've received from cats have needed antibiotic treatment (sometimes via IV) so it is something very serious to keep in mind, but it is not because the cats are disease-ridden. Just don't go sticking your hands near their mouths or put them in a position where they "have to" bite you.
Gisela, I have used the Hav-a-Hart to recover a cat for a number of days. I sometimes slip a plastic shoebox in as a litterbox, which helps with clean up. Or sometimes I cable-tie two traps together for a bigger tom, and that makes it super easy to clean too (clean one side when the cat is hiding in the other trap). It's not a problem.
Many vets used to dealing with ferals don't make you set an appointment because they realize you may or may not catch the cat. Or they're flexible about canceling if you don't get one.
I spay pregnant cats. Some people don't if they know the cat is pregnant before they trap it. It's riskier as far as bloodloss but I prefer to look at as the comparison of risk between the possibility of issues due to the spay-abort and the possibility of any of those kittens being born and NOT being captured, tamed, and fixed before their ferality is irreversible.
As far as nursing cats, I always ask the vet if I've trapped a female to check lactation status and tell me. If they see the cat is lactating, they give her an anethesia reversal shot and I release her as late in the evening as possible the same day as her surgery - again, a balance of risk. I've never had a bad outcome as far as I know. Kittens really can go a day (and more) without their mothers, and the moms can go right back to nursing after the surgery. I've even heard stories about mistakes that were made when lactating females were not identified and were recovered for 3 or more days - and still their kittens were alive. Clearly those weren't newborn kittens, maybe 3-4 weeks old. If you have the luxury of knowing the age of the kittens before you trap, you can wait until you know they're 3-5 weeks old. Or use the trapping of mom as an opportunity to kidnap the kittens - you can even have mama nurse after her spay them in captivity until they are old enough to be weaned, then mom goes home and kittens go for adoption.
I'm sorry you've had a hard time getting some of yours fixed but I truly hope you will continue to do as much neutering as possible, because feeding without neutering is not a good situation for anyone.
I'm sorry you've had a hard time getting some of yours fixed but I truly hope you will continue to do as much neutering as possible, because feeding without neutering is not a good situation for anyone.
I finally did tame her after about three days of wooing her with food, string, and toys.
Three days ... wow! It took us about four months to tame our little furballs. Of course, now I can't get them out of my lap.
Because we already had a cat at the time these two showed up in our yard, we tried the rescues, no-kill shelters, TNR organizations, etc. None of them returned our phone calls or e-mails. We wound up buying a trap, bringing them inside, and then after our elderly cat died, we decided to keep them. After we decided to keep the cats, we applied to a rescue group for low-cost spaying. They gave us certificates to a vet that never answered the phone or returned phone calls, and didn't return our calls or e-mails when we tried to get another certificate.
I know not all rescues and shelters are like this, but my experience with them was downright lousy.
Three days ... wow! It took us about four months to tame our little furballs. Of course, now I can't get them out of my lap.
Because we already had a cat at the time these two showed up in our yard, we tried the rescues, no-kill shelters, TNR organizations, etc. None of them returned our phone calls or e-mails. We wound up buying a trap, bringing them inside, and then after our elderly cat died, we decided to keep them. After we decided to keep the cats, we applied to a rescue group for low-cost spaying. They gave us certificates to a vet that never answered the phone or returned phone calls, and didn't return our calls or e-mails when we tried to get another certificate.
I know not all rescues and shelters are like this, but my experience with them was downright lousy.
Well, I sort of had an army of kids taking turns at wearing the kitten down. We would sort of train her with food for coming incrementally closer to the bowl which we had close to us. At first, she wouldn't come out from the little shelter I built for her but she was so hungry, she had to start coming out a little at a time. Of course we left food for her after we left each time. I wish I had her back or at least was smart enough to get the name and address of the young woman who got her. But at thge time, I thought it might be kind of creepy to ask for her address.
Take any animal scratch or bite very carefully. I know someone who spent a week in the hospital because of a cat bite that got infected. If you get bit, go to the doctors.
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Not calling Animal Control - Feral cats
