Cheryl Anne Gardner here. I’m new to the site, though I have been lurking for some time, and I am new to cats. My husband and I live in a suburban area, but we back to the woods, so we get a lot of feral cats. We’ve taken care of them for many years, and there is a TNR program that works in our area, which traps the cats regularly. Our Moon was trapped and fixed before he came to us. I’ve never had cats. For the last twenty years or so, I’ve been primarily a ferret owner. Our last, Baldrick, passed away at a ripe old age in February. Moon kitten, or Mr. Martin Moonshine, has been with us as a feral for about 6 years. He was the only one who was really into being “with” us. He showed up one spring under a full moon because we had a mouse infestation in our shed. He never left. Took me two years to pet him, but once I did, he rarely left the yard. We built a cat house for him so he had shelter from the rain and the cold in winter, and that went on for about 5 years until one day, he jumped into my lap when I was sitting outside. After that, he started taking walks into the house to look around. We brought him in officially last August, but it was a slow process because he was very scared of the house. So it was a few hours at a time because he’d howl to go back outside. Then he started staying in more and more. Though he still liked to out to hunt around 3AM, but he’d always be back by 5. We only stopped that after he got tapeworms from a mouse he ate, so he’s been in full time with no complaints for about 2 months now. He was easy to potty train, since he marked all the ferret boxes when he first arrived, so we let him pick his favorites and then swapped for bigger boxes once we found a litter he liked. He doesn’t know what toys are, but is starting to come around, and he uses a naturalscratch wooden post to do his scratching, which is more like the trees he’s used to. He never scratches the furniture. We’ve been working with an animal nutritionist to get his food right. He like all the ferals we care for, has always eaten Evo dry (which is what we fed the ferrets) supplemented with canned in the summer. We feed him all canned now: no grain, low carb, various brands and meat sources. He likes grass too, so we grow huge pots of cat grass. We still have a lot of work to do, but he is parasite free now, finally, and the vet says his weight is excellent at 11.5 pounds. He’s a love bug cuddles that’s for sure, and we hope to get a lot more information and help from this site.
