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A feral had a litter. My neighbor found one about 4 weeks old near her porch and took it in. She looked for others but didn't find any. She knew who the mother is---a feral my other neighbor feeds. I saw the mother crying out for her baby for days after my neighbor took in the kitten. We thought that was the last and only one. That was a few weeks ago. Yesterday morning, I saw a litter of kittens on my neighbor's front porch----the neighbor who feeds ferals.
Now we know there are more. My son went outside last night and came right back in to say that there was a kitten in our yard that ran away when he went out. Today I hear mewing on and off. It sounds like it's far away but it's not. I keep going outside to locate where the sound is coming from. I set up my carrier on the porch, but it stopped mewing when the springs on the door made a sound. That tells me it's close, but I've looked everywhere. I haven't seen the mother coming around calling for it.
This mother keeps producing litters and half the neighborhood has cats that are all probably cousins of Bobbles. She seems to care about her kittens since she was crying for the one the neighbor brought in, but it seems she doesn't do a good job of caring for her kittens until they are self sufficient.
All of this explains why Bobbles has been wailing for the past few days. She knows they are out there.
I hope I can find whoever is mewing before it starves.
We found them! They're living under my neighbor's porch. Mamma is still here. They all scattered and we really freaked mamma out. We decided to give them space. We put food out right there. And we're going to ignore them so they can get comfortable again. In a couple of weeks, we'll get the traps from the rescue and capture them all.
Giving them plenty of "breathing room" is definitely the best thing to do. The by-now-probably-notorious (on Kitty-Data) Blaliko had very low tolerance for people who discovered her and her kittens two years ago. No more than 1-3 invasions of their territory by humans and they were outta there. It made for quite the story: People spy the family, get too close, then go inside and call Animal Control. AC arrives at the address the next morning - cats gone. This went on for about a month!
Recognizing my porch as a reliable place to eat and drink, Blaliko eventually relocated herself there with the three kittens (out of six) who had yet to be captured. They settled in for duplex living; the family dined and the young-un's played on the porch, then when it was nap time they retired to the crawl space below. Whenever I had visitors and we went to the back yard, I drew an imaginary line they couldn't cross. Sometimes four pairs of suspicious eyes made sure of that. Only by building up that trust was I able to keep them there.
With any luck you won't have a Seteria to deal with. She's the kitten who always hung back and "hid behind Mom's skirts" - there was no catching her until I managed to corral her inside and AC came over with a cage and butterfly net! This was in mid-July of '12, and Blaliko had delivered her and her siblings probably in late March.
My vet was willing to give discounts for Blaliko's and Seteria's spaying and vaccinations, since they were rescue cats. The practice does that on principle to encourage TNR of stray/ferals. (I happily took advantage of this with Leroy and Metatux, feral tomcats I was able to catch and who couldn't be re-homed. It made no difference that they weren't going to be Weasie's successors.) Here's, well, "Hoping" this will hold true in this case. BTW I've been informed that kittens can be neutered when they're no older than two weeks.
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