ferals that eat at night

Has anyone had experience with ferals that only come to eat in the middle of the night? Even with food withheld 48 hours, one of my weirdo ferals refuses to eat in daylight or hours of major human activity (we are pretty far north here so it is dark 16 hours/day right now). Worse, it seems to eat between midnight and 7:00 AM, when I am asleep; the dish is always still full after the 10:00 PM news and empty by dawn. I'm going to try feeding at 5:00 AM to see if it could be trapped then in the very early morning, since I could bring it to the spay clinic at 9:00. Wish me luck. I don't know how long I can keep up 5:00 AM baiting.

Short of borrowing a night vision trail camera to try to pin down its dining schedule, what can I do?

Edited, I should clarify that Night Cat would not be getting surgery right then on a full tummy--the clinic organization I'm working with would hold until the cat was ready.

are you 100% certain that it is the cat eating and not other wildlife stealing the food?

i have not run into that situation myself, but if you are certain that it is the cat i suppose your 5:00 am feedings or the camera are your only options - short of getting lucky and having it change its schedule.

good luck and thanks for helping out the ferals!

I would just bait the cage at 10pm and see if you catch him. If you catch something else, try 12pm, etc etc. :dk:

Whaler said:

are you 100% certain that it is the cat eating and not other wildlife stealing the food?
i have not run into that situation myself, but if you are certain that it is the cat i suppose your 5:00 am feedings or the camera are your only options - short of getting lucky and having it change its schedule.
good luck and thanks for helping out the ferals!

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Cat tracks are the only tracks going in the shelter, so unless my flying squirrels have turned into diabolical hover-squirrels stealing the cat food without touching the ground, I'm pretty sure it's the cat.

Strays and ferals need all the help they can get. Thank you, too.

maybe the squirrels have manufactured some type of shoes that leave paw prints?

i guess the only option is to do as Minka suggests or do get a camera set up.

I had a similar problem in the beginning with Hercules.   He was eating at night and I believed only raccoons were getting the food - wasn't sure he was around.    I started putting out the food for a narrow window of time a couple hours before sunset and taking it up an hour or two after sunset.   The first night nothing was eaten at all.   The second night he was lurking in the bushes waiting.  This led to the start of a sunset feeding schedule which I still do.    There is a second cat Oscar who eats what's left in the middle of the night though - probably if I started taking the food up again it might force him to show up.    Good luck!