Our latest stray - Oscar

Hi,

I just wanted to share some pics and the story of the latest stray that my neighbor Susan and I are taking care of. His name is Oscar. I first saw him a couple of months ago, but he always ran when I tried to approach him, so I assumed he was at least semi-feral. Susan was able to talk softly to him and get him to let her pet him. Since then, he can't seem to get enough attention, so he must be a stray (or more accurately, an 'abandoned'). With my 4 cats and her 3, we're both overflowing right now, so we're hoping to get him fixed and adopt him out. The local shelter has a great program that offers a free spay, rabies shot, distemper, FIV/FelV check, and microchip for free to low-income families, so we're trying to get him into that.

My biggest concern is that it will be much harder to adopt him out living outside than it would be an indoor cat. I might be able to bring him in overnight and keep him in the bathroom, but I can't really keep him indoors long-term. I haven't talked to any of the local no-kill organizations, but I suspect that at this time of year they have their hands full with the kittens that are pouring in. If anyone has suggestions for dealing with this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, here are the pics of Oscar:

Lounging around in the folding chair on the front porch



Here he is loving the attention I'm giving him. You can see he's pretty skinny. Hopefully getting fed consistently will help, but I suspect he probably has worms as well. Hopefully we can get that taken care of too.



And here's a close-up. The notches in his ear bear witness to some of the fights he's been in:

I love his freckles!!! What a cutie! Wow... good luck with him!

Was he wearing that collar and bell, or did you guys put that on him?

Originally Posted by AddieBee

I love his freckles!!! What a cutie! Wow... good luck with him!

Was he wearing that collar and bell, or did you guys put that on him?

Click to expand...

We put it on him so that, hopefully, the neighbors will be less likely to call animal control on him. This time of year especially, I don't want him getting sent to the county shelter.

He is beautiful! good luck!

Well, unfortunately I wasn't able to get Oscar into the free spay/neuter program the county sponsors. We called and the wait was over two months. We really can't afford to wait that long because he just came back with another big cut on his ear. Two more months of fighting would be bad for him, and he's probably fighting over a female. We have a low cost spay/neuter clinic and I was able to schedule an appointment for him in 2 days on Thursday morning. They'll neuter him and give him rabies+distemper for ~1/3 what my regular vet would cost. I have to catch him Wednesday night and lock him in a spare room so that I'll have him Thurs. morning and make sure he doesn't eat or drink anything overnight. That should be fun.

Once we get Oscar fixed, then hopefully adopted out, there are a couple more cats I have seen running around. Unfortunately, they seem to be much more skittish, so I might need a live trap to catch them. I only see them occasionally, but if they start coming around more regularly, I'll contact the local "Feral Feline Friends" group to see if I can borrow a trap.

The rescue I work with lends out traps, so just make a few phonecalls to your area rescues.