Need advice about feral mama cat - Page 2

Well, I'm back. I've got some good news...maybe. When I went this morning to put food in the bowl, it was of course empty. What I noticed however, was little paw prints in the bowl. I know mom doesn't get in it, but I have seen the kittens get in the bowl to eat. So, that at least tells me that they are still around somewhere, I just have no idea where they are staying right now.

Having never attempted to trap a cat before, much less a feral cat, I have a question. When I put the food in there this evening after work, do I put the food in the trap in a small bowl, or do I just put it on the ground inside the trap? The trap will be in an area that has limestone….it is a pretty uneven surface out there.

OK, I have decided to delay setting the trap. We are having some severe weather right now....rain, thunder, lightning, high winds. This is the first rain we have had in a LONG time. We have been experiencing an extreme drought here lately. It figures that the night I decide to set the trap, the weather does this. I don't want her to get caught in the trap and then be stuck in the trap during this weather.

I'll have to scrap todays attempt as well as tomorrow most likely....weather! I'm worried again. I still have not seen the kittens and I haven't seen mama since last week. The food I put out this morning is untouched. I'm beginning to think those paw prints I saw in the bowl were from an earlier time....maybe I just didn't notice them before.

Have any of you ever trapped something other than a cat when you were trying? I just know I'm going to get a racoon. The food I put out yesterday I left out. I usually pick it up, but knowing I had not fed them since Saturday and I wouldn't be trying to trap her last night, I went ahead and left it out. It was all gone this morning, but something tells me it was racoons, not the cats.

I'm not so sure about that. I am beginning to think they are gone for good. This coming Saturday will be 2 weeks since I have seen the kittens. I haven't seen mama since sometime last week. The food has not been touched the last 2 days. I left it in there overnight, but I know a racoon ate it since the water was full of dirt and there was some mud in the empty food bowl when I got here this morning.

I know that when females are in heat, males will roam. Is the same true for females? When they are in heat, will they roam themselves? I find it so strange that they seem to have completely abandoned a known food source.

Well, still no sign of them. Last week, I finally picked up the food & water bowls....along with the trap I had out there so that they would get used to seeing it. A co-worker of mine did tell me that she saw the mama cat one morning last week. She saw her go into a big drainage pipe in a ditch.



I went over to the tv station last Thursday after work to look around. You can see it 2 buildings over from mine to the right. Didn't see any cats. Someone was out back and asked what I was looking for. I told her cats and quickly told her what was going on. She said she'd let me know if she saw her. I went back the next day and left my name & number along with a photo of mama and the kittens. We'll see...........

In the meantime, I have a couple more questions about TNRing. For those of you who do TNRs, what do you do about fleas. 10 times out of 10, those cats outside will have fleas. When you trap them and put them in your car to take them to be altered, do you end up with fleas in your cars? Also, how do you approach taking a cat in to be altered if you think the cat may belong to someone in the neighborhood (who just doesn't care about having them spayed/neutered)?

So still no sign of the black & white mama cat and her 5 kittens near work. I guess she has truly moved on.

The reason I asked in an earlier post about taking a cat to be spayed or neutered if you think they belong to someone follows:

Backstory.......I own a house in another city that I do not live in (yet). Back in 2009, I lost my job and was unemployed for just about 1 year. During that time, I still went to my house in the other city because I have 2 outdoor cats there that adopted me. Foster has been "with me" since sometime around 2002 for sure. When I would get to my house, he would never be there. I would have to call and he would come in a few minutes. I discovered that he was hanging out on the back porch of a house that was behind mine, but 2 houses over. The house directly behind mine and the one next to it were vacant, so I would wander into those yards while calling him and eventually I saw him coming from the back porch of that house. One afternoon I was out in that yard calling him and the lady was outside. Foster came running and she asked me if that was my cat. I told her yes and she said her young daughter had been feeding him. He gets plenty of food from me by the way. Anyway, they eventually got a cat...a little black one. He would still go and hang out with that cat. I think he's pretty much stopped that now.

Back to the present (about 4 weeks ago)............when I pass by my house in the mornings before work to feed my 2 outdoor cats there, I had been noticing that there was this black cat literally trying to steal food. I would go in the house, get the food container and go out on the back porch and put food in their 2 bowls. I would go back in to put the container away and when I would come out, she would be at the bowls eating, but when I walked out, she bolted. She would stay around the corner and when she heard me get in my car, she would creep back to the porch. If I opened the door, she ran. It was as though she was starving and desperate for food. She was rather skinny also. One of those morning as she ran away, I noticed that she had milk in her.....so I realized that she had kittens somewhere. I often found her hanging out at the back of my yard where my property meets with the property of the house behind me. The neighbor in the back, their wood fence is falling apart and they haven't repaired it, so the cats are free to roam into my yard easily. Anyway, back on the 18th of June, I saw her hanging out under the house next to the one directly behind mine and eventually, 3 little kittens wandered out. I got out a cat toy and they took to it immediately. Each of them growled something fierce when they got it in their little mouth. I got these photos.


This solid black one is a little boy.








This black & white with the well defined white between her eyes is a girl.





That is mama at the bowl.





More to follow in next post.........

OK....so when I leave that house to head back home, I usually drive around the back street. Eventually, I saw the mama and the 3 babies in the driveway of the house I suspected they belong...which is the same one where Foster used to hang out and the same one where the lady told me she got her daughter a the little black cat. So them being in the driveway pretty much confirmed for me that it was the same cat. They obviously didn't get her spayed. So that was why I was asking about bringing in cats to be fixed if you think they actually belong to someone. I think even if I talked to these people, they wouldn't have her or the babies fixed. The kittens are 2 boys & a girl. What should I do?!!!

More photos I took this past Saturday (2 days ago).....








This is the other little boy, with very little white between his eyes, different from the little girl.....and he has a black chin.









Mama hiding under the corner of the house.

OK, so I went to the house yesterday where I think this cat family belongs and sure enough I was right. The mama cat, whose name is Dora, is the same cat from a couple summers ago. Anyway, I asked if they planned to get them spayed/neutered and she told me they couldn't afford it. I even explained to her how if they are not fixed, it would be a never ending cycle of babies. I wished I knew those numbers by heart of how many cats can come from one unspayed female in a seven year span, but I just couldn't remember the number. I told her about Spay Nation since she was unaware of the organization. You can get a cat done for $40, but it has to be in a trap, not a carrier. Even after I told her about the low cost of $40, she still told me she couldn't afford it when I asked if she did the mom I would take care of the kittens. My gut didn't believe her, but what can you do?! Anyway, I asked if they planned to keep the kittens or wanted to find homes for them. She told me her niece wants one of the kittens and her grand daughter wants to keep the others......so no home finding task for me. She also told me that Dora had 4 kittens, but one of them died early on. I asked her if it would be OK with her if I went ahead and had them all done. She said that was OK with them....what is she going to say? She did comment that this was going to cost me alot of money. I'm completely aware of that, but I'm thankful that I can afford to do this. While the kittens will not be leading the kinds of lives I'd like to see them lead as indoor kitties, at least she's allowing me to get them altered so there won't be any new ones from this family. Even though her niece is planning to take one, I'll still get that one done to, because I can probably win a bet if I say that the niece will not get the cat fixed. Anyway, I decided not to tell them that the cats will all come back with their ears tipped. And because of this, I plan to take them all at the same time. Two of the three kittens can easily be picked up....the third I'll have to trick with a toy. Mama will most likely have to be trapped since she won't let me touch her. She's started to wander closer to me, but she still won't let me touch her.

Feralrv......about the flea situation. If I had an actual pickup truck, it would be no big deal to secure them in the back, but I don't. I have a durango. When you said to spray, do you mean to actually spray the carpet in the cargo area of my car? Or do you mean to put down plastic & neswpaper spraying both as I lay them down?

Well, mama and her 3 babies were dropped off this morning at Spay Nation to be neutered & spayed. Here's hoping everything goes smooth and no complications arise. I pick them up tomorrow morning and bring them back to their home.

Well, everything went somewhat well and the kittens & mama were released this morning. There was only one mishap and it is partly my fault. I had identified the kittens as 2 males and a female. I had to fill out paperwork and affix a label to each trap. It seems I misidentified the female. It turns out all 3 kittens were male. The veterinarian told me that the discovery had been made after the incision was made in the kittens stomach and he couldn't find her uterus. He apologized saying that even though I had the kitten mislabeled as a female, their people are supposed to check the sex of the animals before surgery starts....and no one did that. So the poor little boy probably has double the pain now.

Sorry no update for awhile....life has me busy.

Yes, I know....they should have checked. But I still felt a little bad at the time it happened since they went by what I had marked on the traps. If I had gotten it right, this would have never happened. Oh well....what's done is done.

The kittens seem to all be doing just fine. Dora does not seem to be gaining any weight back. She's still very thin. They still come to my yard. I can get them there easily by just calling loudly if they are within hearing distance.

By the way, the owner was very appreciative of what I did. She told me thank you several times. I think she is truly sincere about it.