Hi!
The last few weeks we've had a very tiny, very scared kitten hanging around our garden. We have two cats of our own (females, both de-sexed and vaccinated) and the kitten has been stealing their food that's both inside and outside the house (one of the cats only eats if we put the food outside). Our cats tend to ignore it (even when it's inside the house), although one has growled at it occasionally (just to tell it to back off).
I've asked around on local Facebook groups and other websites, but nobody's claimed it. It's absolutely terrified of us too, so we're pretty sure it's a stray.
Last Sunday in the middle of the night it accidentally got shut inside our house when I closed the back door -- I didn't notice it at all. I got up a couple of hours later and when it saw me it got a huge fright and ran down the hallway into my room and ended up hiding in my wardrobe.
I sat on the floor talking to it for a little bit but it was so scared of me that it ran to another part of my wardrobe and hid its face against the wall so that I couldn't see it. I ended up leaving the door it came in from open over night since it wouldn't move while I was still awake and the lights were on (understandably!). It had disappeared by the time I woke up about 5 hours later. I would've kept it inside but the next day was a public holiday so the local shelters/vets wouldn't have been open and it seemed too cruel to keep it in for quite that long.
Does anyone have any advice as to how I should catch it? We think it comes inside sometimes but runs away as soon as it hears us and it won't let us approach it outside. It's really small and quite skinny and I'm worrying about it a bit. It's also been rather cold here at night lately (between 10C and 5C/50F and 41F), which doesn't help my worries. We have a lot of places in our garden for it to sleep (long grass, bushes, leaves, vegetable patches...) and there's a small hole in one of the fences that leads into a little tunnel that we think it mainly hides in.
I've been making sure it has food and water every night, and it's definitely been eating what I've put down for it. However, we also have hedgehogs living in our garden (wild hedgehogs are very common here -- we have at least 3!) and for whatever reason they eat cat food (dry or wet) so it's sometimes hard to tell who's been eating it.
Unfortunately our house is too small to have 3 cats so once we catch it and take it to the local shelter we're most likely going to have to give it up for adoption (if it's healthy, that is). I would really like to help this kitten. I've never had to deal with capturing a feral/stray cat at all before, so I have no idea what to do.
Thanks in advance for any advice, and sorry for the rambling post!
The last few weeks we've had a very tiny, very scared kitten hanging around our garden. We have two cats of our own (females, both de-sexed and vaccinated) and the kitten has been stealing their food that's both inside and outside the house (one of the cats only eats if we put the food outside). Our cats tend to ignore it (even when it's inside the house), although one has growled at it occasionally (just to tell it to back off).
I've asked around on local Facebook groups and other websites, but nobody's claimed it. It's absolutely terrified of us too, so we're pretty sure it's a stray.
Last Sunday in the middle of the night it accidentally got shut inside our house when I closed the back door -- I didn't notice it at all. I got up a couple of hours later and when it saw me it got a huge fright and ran down the hallway into my room and ended up hiding in my wardrobe.
I sat on the floor talking to it for a little bit but it was so scared of me that it ran to another part of my wardrobe and hid its face against the wall so that I couldn't see it. I ended up leaving the door it came in from open over night since it wouldn't move while I was still awake and the lights were on (understandably!). It had disappeared by the time I woke up about 5 hours later. I would've kept it inside but the next day was a public holiday so the local shelters/vets wouldn't have been open and it seemed too cruel to keep it in for quite that long.
Does anyone have any advice as to how I should catch it? We think it comes inside sometimes but runs away as soon as it hears us and it won't let us approach it outside. It's really small and quite skinny and I'm worrying about it a bit. It's also been rather cold here at night lately (between 10C and 5C/50F and 41F), which doesn't help my worries. We have a lot of places in our garden for it to sleep (long grass, bushes, leaves, vegetable patches...) and there's a small hole in one of the fences that leads into a little tunnel that we think it mainly hides in.
I've been making sure it has food and water every night, and it's definitely been eating what I've put down for it. However, we also have hedgehogs living in our garden (wild hedgehogs are very common here -- we have at least 3!) and for whatever reason they eat cat food (dry or wet) so it's sometimes hard to tell who's been eating it.
Unfortunately our house is too small to have 3 cats so once we catch it and take it to the local shelter we're most likely going to have to give it up for adoption (if it's healthy, that is). I would really like to help this kitten. I've never had to deal with capturing a feral/stray cat at all before, so I have no idea what to do.
Thanks in advance for any advice, and sorry for the rambling post!
