New to cats..

Hi Everyone
Glad I found this forum, I thought I had a unique situation but must have read 5 or 6 threads already with stories similar to mine! A little over a week ago a stray cat showed up in our yard, pretty scared of people and everything that made a noise at first but its warmed up to us a lot in the past week to the point where it comes running to us whenever we're outside and rolls over to get its belly rubbed. I think its pregnant and got dumped, its mid section looks a little too wide to me compared to every other cat I've ever seen. None of the neighbors know whose it is, a call to the humane society said nobody had reported a lost cat, and now one of our neighbors is getting mad that its "scaring away all of his birds". Personally I think thats great, because his "birds" drop bombs on my truck all the time but the past two weeks its been clean

So my wife and I are hoping to be able to adopt the cat into our home. We've already got two dogs, but the cat doesn't seem to be afraid of them so maybe it will work out. I've got a large (4'x6') dog crate I'm going to set up in a back room tonight, the cat let me pick it up yesterday so I think I'll be able to get it into the large crate for the night, then get her to the vet for a checkup tomorrow. And then we'll see what the vet says and what happens after that...

So the cat knew something was up last night. I was outside and it was hanging around letting me pet it. I went in the house and put on some leather gloves thinking it might scratch or bite me trying to put it in the crate, and when I came outside with those on I couldn't get within 10 feet of it! Got rid of the gloves, no problem anymore and it came up to me. I tried without the gloves and the cat started struggling when I picked it up and started walking with it (and I had another 30 feet to go yet) so I set her back down. It doesn't seem to be afraid of the crate, when I was too far away to do anything it walked right up to the open door and was sniffing it. I bought some treats, toys, and catnip spray later last night.. Hopefully some combination of those three will be able to lure it into the crate or at least next to the crate tonight.

Thought I'd throw up two pictures of our new friend since I have a minute here..





You can kind of see the wider belly in the second picture.

Just to update the thread..

I never was able to capture the cat back in July. Around the 10th of July was the last day we saw the cat, it seemed really strange but it just stopped coming. We figured something must have happened like it got trapped or worse.

Fast forward to this past Tuesday, my wife calls me and says the cat is sitting by our door meowing, and she spotted two kittens running into the neighbors flowers. I picked up some more cat food on the way home (we gave away the other bag I bought to a friend after not seeing it for a month..). Fed the cat, its as friendly as ever, super super thin now though. After it ate a pretty good amount of food I tried picking it up and setting it on my lap. It had no problem with that, didn't try to run away or even get off my lap. I set it down and went into the neighbors yard to try to get the kittens.. No luck there. They're pretty skittish and were in the middle of a huge leafy flower bed. So I left the cat go because her kittens are at the very most 6 weeks old. The cat did come back for food last night and this morning, haven't spotted the kittens since Tuesday though. Hopefully in the next week or so they'll start coming to the food dish too.

Didn't get any pictures or even a really good look at the kittens yet, but according to the wife one has short hair and looks kind of like the mother, and the other is grey with white paws and has longer hair.

Just an update.. haven't got the kittens yet, but getting close. Been watching where the mother has been going and she must have moved them closer yesterday because she's no longer crossing the street all the time. I saw one of the kittens hiding behind my garage this morning, I didn't try and catch it because I was on my way out the door to go to work. Perhaps tonight, I've got kitten arrival times on record now that I borrowed a trail camera. The thing that really gets me is I got home with this camera and I had to set the time and date on it last night before I put it out, the time was 9:30pm. There's a picture it took of me setting it up at 9:31, and another one of the mother cat alone at 9:40. So I just missed them last night.

Still no kittens in hand, but getting close (literally). Wife was outside last night and the mother cat came to her so she sat down on the driveway and was petting it for a little bit when she called me because she heard noises from behind some bushes and thought it might be the kittens. So I grabbed a can of tuna (smelliest thing I had in the house that I thought they'd eat!) and went out with it, fed some to the mother cat and got her to follow me over to the bushes about 10 feet away from the corner of them and fed her some more there. A minute later there were 4 little faces looking at me from under the bushes. Threw a little tuna their way, they ran away but came back pretty quick once they found out it was food.. Threw a little more, they didn't run. Kept scooting my way closer and delivering bits of food and eventually got two of them to eat little bits of food off of the tip of my finger. The mother cat stayed about half the time until I think she was full, then just walked off somewhere else.

As far as the kittens, two (the two that I don't think I got a picture of) are longer haired grey with white paws, one is a shorter hair tiger stripe, and the other one looks like the mother but with long hair. The smaller of the grey ones with white paws is by far the bravest, that one came out for the tuna first and had no problems eating off my finger. The larger grey/white one also ate off my finger but it took a little while for that one to come closer. Tiger striped one likes tuna and likes to hiss at me, I'd throw the tuna and it'd hiss at me, then eat. Then hiss again. The fourth one is really skittish, it came and ate regular food from a bowl later after I moved away but wouldn't come within 10 feet of me for the tuna. I can tell already that one is going to be the hardest to get. Will feed again tonight and see what happens.

And the final update for this thread..

Tried most of Friday evening and Saturday morning and afternoon to feed the kittens by hand and catch them. It became pretty obvious to me that this wasn't going to work, they were just too fast for me and afraid of people. I also found out after moving my camera that some kids were chasing them behind my garage and trying to catch them, probably was why the mother cat kept moving them across the street. I could see where the kittens were hiding all day so I borrowed a live trap, parked my truck so the area the kids were coming in from was blocked, bought the stinkiest tuna and cat treats I could find and went to work.

Set the trap up around 9pm on Saturday. By 9:30 I had one of the kittens. It was the one in the picture I posted that is farthest on the left, a long haired grey/striped male. I had the house windows open so I heard the trap when it was set off, went outside, and the mother cat was eating 3 feet away with another kitten. Didn't seem to care at all that the one was trapped, I got a dog crate out, removed the kitten (seemed really scared), and brought it inside the house for the night.

Heard the trap go off again later that night, caught the mother cat. I could pick her up already so I let her go to be with the kittens. Sunday morning I caught the short haired striped one that liked to hiss at me. Put it in the crate with the other kitten, this one seemed pretty wild so I used my welding gloves to get it out of the trap and into the crate with the first kitten.

Didn't catch any more through Tuesday night. The other two kittens absolutely would not go in the trap (although they'd sit there and stare at the food in it). They kept feeding from the mother cat, and at this point the forecast for the weekend was lows in the 20's at night so I knew I had to get them soon. I had talked to the animal shelter, they said the local police were the only ones that could bring in a stray animal so I picked up the mother and put her in a crate with the hissing kitten and called the police who picked them up and brought them to the local animal hospital for holding. So the other two kittens were now on their own. I had to leave town on Wednesday morning but saw the kittens around the trap when I left. Wife called Wednesday afternoon and said one more was in the trap, police picked that one up too. And finally Thursday afternoon we caught the last kitten.

But the story isn't over yet. My wife and I decided we're going to keep the first kitten that we caught, named him Fenster. And my parents after hearing about the kitten drama for the past couple of weeks went to the local animal shelter to "sponsor" the mother cat and all the kittens, which basically ensures they won't be put down, pays for their medical treatment and reduces the cost if someone wants to adopt them. We had found out from the first police officer that the animals are held at the same animal hospital we usually go to, so when we took Fenster in for a check up and his first shots, they knew all about the other kittens because they were there And the best news is they said they already had found homes for all of them, even the mother! Apparently they have a waiting list for kittens, and we just got lucky with the mother.

So that concludes the cat catching drama, I'll have to get some pictures of Fenster off of my camera at home and post them.

One of the only pictures where he's sitting still and not a blur!

He's pretty tame, almost completely different from when we caught him a week ago. The first two or three days he stayed hidden in a box we put inside his crate and wouldn't come out if anyone was around. Now he wants to be out of the cage playing all the time. He'll run and hide if there's a loud or new noise, but he's pretty quick to come back out. He doesn't try and run or escape if I walk up to him to pet him or pick him up anymore either.

And just to update this thread one more time since I found out a little more information.. One of my co-workers's wife's co-worker (follow that? ) actually ended up with one of the kittens! It lives in a heated barn with their horses. They know the person that took the other two kittens, they're also "horse people" who are keeping them in with their horses and said they're doing really good.

A picture of the first one that was adopted that they sent me today -