I joined this site because I need some wise advice from those who have much experience with taming feral kittens and working with strays. My sister manages a colony of about 20 ferals (whom she has personally had spayed/neutered over the years) on Hatteras Island, and even she was stumped when I told her this story and asked her to help me understand what is going on. Bear with me. This is long because I need to tell the entire story.
Some background information: All of last year, I very randomly saw a female cat crossing my back yard as if she was on her way from one place to another. She looked quite scrawny, so I always set out a bowl of scraps for her (chicken, lunch meat, etc….no cat food since we didn’t have a cat anymore…my beloved 14-year-old sweet girl had died a year prior).
Sometime around mid-to-late July, a black and white kitten peered into the door of our screened porch, and when I went out to put some milk and soft food down for him, he darted off in fear. It was hard to gauge his age because he looked at least three months, but he was very scrawny.
The next day, the mother cat showed up for food, and as soon as she ate some chicken scraps and drank some water, she lay down on her side, and immediately, the black kitten darted out from where it had been hiding in the shrubs near my porch door, and she nursed him.
I saw the two of them a bit sporadically for the next two weeks, then on August 1, they began showing up every evening anywhere from 5 to 7 pm. I’m in Florida where it doesn’t get dark until almost 9 in the summertime. They would eat, hunker down for a few minutes, then leave.
Gradually they stayed longer each time, and soon a black tomcat began accompanying them. The kitten’s marking are just like his, so he is obviously the dad. He was a very involved kitty dad—always let the kitten eat first, then he would groom him and play with him. The kitten tried to nurse the mom during this time, but she was forcefully weaning him, and he soon realized how much he liked regular food.
From August 1 to September 1, the cat family came every evening, and eventually the kitten played for hours on our porch with us. The tomcat seems like a stray because he is very approachable and comfortable around us. The mom cat acts like a true feral—always skittish. By September 1, the kitten would play until he fell asleep on a chair cushion we put on the porch floor for him (it’s a screened porch—we kept the door open), and he would sleep all night on our porch. He looked older than three months—supposedly past the age when you can domesticate feral kittens—but he made it clear that he wanted us to be his human family, and our home was his home. His parents would sneak off and leave him sleeping by himself on our porch.
Sometime soon after September 1, I decided to totally adopt the kitten and never let him outside again, because he seemed so happy and relieved to be done with the hard life of survival in the wild. He happily played, ate, and slept in our house or in our enclosed screened porch (door closed now) for three weeks until I decided to take him to the vet on September 25 to be vaccinated, dewormed, and neutered. I fed his parents out another back door when they showed up. I didn't see the tomcat much during these three weeks.
The night before the surgery, we had to not give him food past 10 pm, of course, which meant for the first time since he had adopted us as his family, in his kitty mind, we were depriving him of food and he was hungry, which I think scared him. He must have been crying and meowing on the porch all night long (I didn’t hear him for some reason, and I’m usually a light sleeper), because when I woke up on the morning to take him to the vet (Sept 25), I could see that the screen had been ripped in a few places, and there was my kitten boy roaming in the backyard. His tomcat was also in the back yard. I think he must’ve heard his kitten son crying all night long and decided to rip the screen and set him free.
So I took the kitten to the vet, where I learned that he was six months old. He did well with his surgery, and within two days, had regained all his energy and fully recovered.
THEN--and here is where the story veers off onto another track, and I need help and advice—this kitten, who had been so happy and content staying in our house and porch, and not going outside since Sept 1 (other than the night before surgery when his daddy broke him out of porch prison, so to speak), suddenly wanted OUT and BAD.
So on September 27, because I didn’t want him to rip the screens in his desperation to get out that morning, I let him out, and he immediately took off toward the gate of our privacy fence and crawled under it. I watched where he went after that as far as I could see, and he followed the same track they had all followed when they’d come every night in the month of August for their dinner.
Keep in mind that this is the ONLY feral/stray cat family I have seen in the entire year and a half I’ve lived in his neighborhood. There is NOT a large feral colony. Also keep in mind that these are very involved parents, and oddly enough, the tomcat daddy is very involved. Maybe it was a first litter for the mom and the dad. Maybe the kitten was the only one who survived, and so they are very attached to him (like “helicopter parents” as lots of young parents are these days).
From September 27 until today, this has been my kitty’s pattern: he leaves early in the morning, anywhere from 5 am to 8 or 9 am, and I do not see him until he comes home after dark. When he comes home, he is truly my baby. He sleeps on my bed, plays with his toys, knows where his special treats drawer is, and is my sweet boy. He is totally domesticated.
BUT—while he is gone all day, and I mean 12 to 14 hours at a stretch—the mom cat comes around at least twice for meals during the day. The tomcat comes around twice for meals. His last visit is usually just before dark. When the tomcat daddy leaves, after 30 minutes later, my kitty comes home.
I swear to God, it is like they are taking shifts guarding the cat family campsite in a wooded lot that I see them heading to, and his shift is the day shift, and their shift is the night shift. I NEVER see my kitty during the day. He literally does not come home until dark, no matter how much I call him, no matter how much it rains (as it is doing no). And when he does come home, he is so hungry, so thirsty, and so tired that he can barely eat and drink enough to be filled before crashing into an hours-long sleep. He is now only 8 months old, and it’s like his kittenhood is being robbed.
I honestly get the impression that his cat parents abuse him/bully him/coerce him into returning to the family cat campsite every single day, and he caves in because of the feral cat pecking order. I’ve seen the mom cat hiss and spit at him, and actually punch him as he tries to run past her. He sometimes plays in our yard for about 10 minutes before leaving, and he looks so happy and free, and then he leaves reluctantly, his little kitty facial expression and body language practically saying with dread, “Off to the salt mines.”
I wonder if maybe the female cat has had another litter of kittens because her paps sometimes look very red and swollen. Could it be that since they’re such an insular, involved cat family, my kitty feels compelled to go watch over the kittens all day long since the parents have that duty at night when he is here in my house?
Another development in the past few weeks is that he refuses to use a litterbox now. I literally have to take him outside, as if he were a little dog, and let him go potty. And sometimes he runs off to wherever the cat family campsite is instead of coming back in the house with me. He did this recently at 2:30 in the morning, yet he still did not come home until dark later that night.
Is this a weird case of him having one foot in the feral world and one foot in the human world because he was domesticated at five months? (Also, we never had to work to domesticate him. He took to us immediately as if we had raised him from birth.)
I can’t follow the cats to see exactly where they end up because they run along two privacy fences at the backs of other people’s yards, and then they scoot under a privacy fence and into the wooded area behind another person’s yard. I don’t know these people.
I just hope someone on this forum can help me understand why he would 1) disappear every day and not come home until dark, and when he does come home, he is starved, thirsty, and exhausted; 2) not come home when I call him (he comes when I call him here in the house); 3) not come home even when it’s raining unless it is dark, as in nighttime; 4) always run off to the exact same location they all came from when they used to visit me as a family group; 5) the mom cat only shows up to eat after my kitty has run off, as if they’re doing a shift change; 6) my kitty only comes home after the daddy tomcat has eaten his last meal of the day near dark, and leaves.
I suppose I want someone to tell me if my hunch is correct that he somehow feels compelled to return to their cat family campsite every day, but why?
And why did he start following this schedule two days after he was neutered when he had spent three weeks prior to that being perfectly happy as an indoor cat all the time?
The tomcat marks various places in my yard when he comes here to eat. (He does not come to eat as regularly as the mom cat does.) Is my kitty sensing, as the younger beta male, that my yard and the porch has now become the territory of the alpha male? Is that why my kitty runs away every day? I am seriously considering taking the tomcat to the humane society because he is tame enough to let me pick him up, and he has a festering sore on his forehead. Do you think this will solve the problem, and my kitty will no longer feel compelled to run to their family camp every day?
My heart is breaking because of never seeing my kitty except at night when he is thirsty, starved, and so tired he can hardly walk to my bed where he crashed into sleep for several hours, only to start the whole process over again. Any advice, suggestions, ideas, or words of wisdom are much appreciated.
Some background information: All of last year, I very randomly saw a female cat crossing my back yard as if she was on her way from one place to another. She looked quite scrawny, so I always set out a bowl of scraps for her (chicken, lunch meat, etc….no cat food since we didn’t have a cat anymore…my beloved 14-year-old sweet girl had died a year prior).
Sometime around mid-to-late July, a black and white kitten peered into the door of our screened porch, and when I went out to put some milk and soft food down for him, he darted off in fear. It was hard to gauge his age because he looked at least three months, but he was very scrawny.
The next day, the mother cat showed up for food, and as soon as she ate some chicken scraps and drank some water, she lay down on her side, and immediately, the black kitten darted out from where it had been hiding in the shrubs near my porch door, and she nursed him.
I saw the two of them a bit sporadically for the next two weeks, then on August 1, they began showing up every evening anywhere from 5 to 7 pm. I’m in Florida where it doesn’t get dark until almost 9 in the summertime. They would eat, hunker down for a few minutes, then leave.
Gradually they stayed longer each time, and soon a black tomcat began accompanying them. The kitten’s marking are just like his, so he is obviously the dad. He was a very involved kitty dad—always let the kitten eat first, then he would groom him and play with him. The kitten tried to nurse the mom during this time, but she was forcefully weaning him, and he soon realized how much he liked regular food.
From August 1 to September 1, the cat family came every evening, and eventually the kitten played for hours on our porch with us. The tomcat seems like a stray because he is very approachable and comfortable around us. The mom cat acts like a true feral—always skittish. By September 1, the kitten would play until he fell asleep on a chair cushion we put on the porch floor for him (it’s a screened porch—we kept the door open), and he would sleep all night on our porch. He looked older than three months—supposedly past the age when you can domesticate feral kittens—but he made it clear that he wanted us to be his human family, and our home was his home. His parents would sneak off and leave him sleeping by himself on our porch.
Sometime soon after September 1, I decided to totally adopt the kitten and never let him outside again, because he seemed so happy and relieved to be done with the hard life of survival in the wild. He happily played, ate, and slept in our house or in our enclosed screened porch (door closed now) for three weeks until I decided to take him to the vet on September 25 to be vaccinated, dewormed, and neutered. I fed his parents out another back door when they showed up. I didn't see the tomcat much during these three weeks.
The night before the surgery, we had to not give him food past 10 pm, of course, which meant for the first time since he had adopted us as his family, in his kitty mind, we were depriving him of food and he was hungry, which I think scared him. He must have been crying and meowing on the porch all night long (I didn’t hear him for some reason, and I’m usually a light sleeper), because when I woke up on the morning to take him to the vet (Sept 25), I could see that the screen had been ripped in a few places, and there was my kitten boy roaming in the backyard. His tomcat was also in the back yard. I think he must’ve heard his kitten son crying all night long and decided to rip the screen and set him free.
So I took the kitten to the vet, where I learned that he was six months old. He did well with his surgery, and within two days, had regained all his energy and fully recovered.
THEN--and here is where the story veers off onto another track, and I need help and advice—this kitten, who had been so happy and content staying in our house and porch, and not going outside since Sept 1 (other than the night before surgery when his daddy broke him out of porch prison, so to speak), suddenly wanted OUT and BAD.
So on September 27, because I didn’t want him to rip the screens in his desperation to get out that morning, I let him out, and he immediately took off toward the gate of our privacy fence and crawled under it. I watched where he went after that as far as I could see, and he followed the same track they had all followed when they’d come every night in the month of August for their dinner.
Keep in mind that this is the ONLY feral/stray cat family I have seen in the entire year and a half I’ve lived in his neighborhood. There is NOT a large feral colony. Also keep in mind that these are very involved parents, and oddly enough, the tomcat daddy is very involved. Maybe it was a first litter for the mom and the dad. Maybe the kitten was the only one who survived, and so they are very attached to him (like “helicopter parents” as lots of young parents are these days).
From September 27 until today, this has been my kitty’s pattern: he leaves early in the morning, anywhere from 5 am to 8 or 9 am, and I do not see him until he comes home after dark. When he comes home, he is truly my baby. He sleeps on my bed, plays with his toys, knows where his special treats drawer is, and is my sweet boy. He is totally domesticated.
BUT—while he is gone all day, and I mean 12 to 14 hours at a stretch—the mom cat comes around at least twice for meals during the day. The tomcat comes around twice for meals. His last visit is usually just before dark. When the tomcat daddy leaves, after 30 minutes later, my kitty comes home.
I swear to God, it is like they are taking shifts guarding the cat family campsite in a wooded lot that I see them heading to, and his shift is the day shift, and their shift is the night shift. I NEVER see my kitty during the day. He literally does not come home until dark, no matter how much I call him, no matter how much it rains (as it is doing no). And when he does come home, he is so hungry, so thirsty, and so tired that he can barely eat and drink enough to be filled before crashing into an hours-long sleep. He is now only 8 months old, and it’s like his kittenhood is being robbed.
I honestly get the impression that his cat parents abuse him/bully him/coerce him into returning to the family cat campsite every single day, and he caves in because of the feral cat pecking order. I’ve seen the mom cat hiss and spit at him, and actually punch him as he tries to run past her. He sometimes plays in our yard for about 10 minutes before leaving, and he looks so happy and free, and then he leaves reluctantly, his little kitty facial expression and body language practically saying with dread, “Off to the salt mines.”
I wonder if maybe the female cat has had another litter of kittens because her paps sometimes look very red and swollen. Could it be that since they’re such an insular, involved cat family, my kitty feels compelled to go watch over the kittens all day long since the parents have that duty at night when he is here in my house?
Another development in the past few weeks is that he refuses to use a litterbox now. I literally have to take him outside, as if he were a little dog, and let him go potty. And sometimes he runs off to wherever the cat family campsite is instead of coming back in the house with me. He did this recently at 2:30 in the morning, yet he still did not come home until dark later that night.
Is this a weird case of him having one foot in the feral world and one foot in the human world because he was domesticated at five months? (Also, we never had to work to domesticate him. He took to us immediately as if we had raised him from birth.)
I can’t follow the cats to see exactly where they end up because they run along two privacy fences at the backs of other people’s yards, and then they scoot under a privacy fence and into the wooded area behind another person’s yard. I don’t know these people.
I just hope someone on this forum can help me understand why he would 1) disappear every day and not come home until dark, and when he does come home, he is starved, thirsty, and exhausted; 2) not come home when I call him (he comes when I call him here in the house); 3) not come home even when it’s raining unless it is dark, as in nighttime; 4) always run off to the exact same location they all came from when they used to visit me as a family group; 5) the mom cat only shows up to eat after my kitty has run off, as if they’re doing a shift change; 6) my kitty only comes home after the daddy tomcat has eaten his last meal of the day near dark, and leaves.
I suppose I want someone to tell me if my hunch is correct that he somehow feels compelled to return to their cat family campsite every day, but why?
And why did he start following this schedule two days after he was neutered when he had spent three weeks prior to that being perfectly happy as an indoor cat all the time?
The tomcat marks various places in my yard when he comes here to eat. (He does not come to eat as regularly as the mom cat does.) Is my kitty sensing, as the younger beta male, that my yard and the porch has now become the territory of the alpha male? Is that why my kitty runs away every day? I am seriously considering taking the tomcat to the humane society because he is tame enough to let me pick him up, and he has a festering sore on his forehead. Do you think this will solve the problem, and my kitty will no longer feel compelled to run to their family camp every day?
My heart is breaking because of never seeing my kitty except at night when he is thirsty, starved, and so tired he can hardly walk to my bed where he crashed into sleep for several hours, only to start the whole process over again. Any advice, suggestions, ideas, or words of wisdom are much appreciated.
. So be careful. I never recommend taking cats to shelters because 75% of cats entering shelters nationally are killed, and I don't know how your shelters are run. 
but please consider talking to someone at an experienced organization-I can almost guarantee you'll find someone who can help with the WHOLE family 
