Ghost ferals

OK, is it just me, or do some ferals seem to vanish in thin air?

I walk around a lot at night (it doesn't help that we have a cemetery next door) to keep tabs on who is in our colony. I've been trying to find one small tortie as well.

Sometimes I'll see a dark shape run into a bush. When I go over to the bush - Ahhhh! Vanished. This keeps happening. I'll see something out of the corner of my eye...next moment...gone!

If I approach the area where I thought I saw something - there's nothing there.

My imagination or vanishing ferals?

We have a network of sewers around - sometimes I wonder if they disappear into it, but I imagine they wouldn't want their feet wet. We also have ground-level apartments with a "sunken" window area. I keep thinking there must be a hole somewhere.

Burrows? Dens? Tunnels? Too quick for my eyes?

Wouldn't surprize me at all that there would be ferals that elude you seeing them. One caretaker I talk to says if you "see" 4 cats...you probably have closer to 8. Maybe it would be a good idea to set up a trap around the area you have seen this mysterious shape to determine if it is indeed a feral cat.

Katie

In my yard there is small colony, actually it is a family. I've TNR the mother and her 4 babies 2 years ago. The feral father has been allusive for the last 2 years. There are signs the he's been around, every few months I'll get a brief sighting of him. I had friends that are expert trappers try to get him with no luck.

<<Wouldn't surprize me at all that there would be ferals that elude you seeing them. One caretaker I talk to says if you "see" 4 cats...you probably have closer to 8.>>

I often wondered about that but I never trapped a cat I didn't already know about.

Hi FeralWhisper,

If that Indian Legent is true I sure feel sorry for all the carnivorous.

Not your imagination! It's possible it's a squirrel or something, but skunks move too slowly, and raccoons and possums are too bulky. It is very likely its the ferals. We've had vanishers - that turned up in traps, eventually. The first vanisher we had we named Shadow. Turned out he was all black, too, which at dusk, when we were first out, made it really difficult, lol!

"Cats, no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind"

- A.S.J. Tessimond, Cats

I agree with the other posters. Cats are very quick and extremely elusive. When our Punky is in the basement, sometimes I trip over her feet and at other times she seems to blend in with the surroundings and I have trouble finding her. Lately she's been showing off by jumping on the TV cabinet, jumping up on the basement window ledge, then on top of the basement block. She snakes over the top of the cement blocks under the wooden rafters to the other basement window in a matter of seconds! She is so quick! Then she'll decide to leap from the basement window ledge to the basement floor and that's a seven foot jump.

Mooie, our outside cat, will effortlessly leap from the porch floor to the top of three bales of straw piled on top of the other. Mooie leaves every morning at about 6:00 or 7:00 A.M., to return that evening. I would love to put some type of tracking device on him! We always wonder where he goes or hangs out during the daytime.

Lucy goes into psycho cat mode before the stroke of midnight. She'll fly through the family room and into the laundry room, leap to the top of the cat tree, jump on top of the laundry room cupboards, jump down on top of the washing maching, then the dryer, jump off onto the floor, then back into the family room. Lucy still leaps on top of my drapery rod and walks across until she decides to leap onto the sofa.

Cindy will just walk around, observing everything that's happening with those big, round, gooseberry green cat eyes. It's funny how each cat has its own personality.

It could definitely be feral cats or mice! I've seen mice zoom by so quickly that you notice them in the blink of an eye. Mice, like feral cats, are nocturnal.

Hi Ellen54

Hi FeralWhisper,

If that Indian Legent is true I sure feel sorry for all the carnivorous.

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Then my cats and I are in trouble.
Fern

Fortunately for me, I don't eat cats

I told my husband I want some night vision binoculars because I get so frustrated with those half-sightings and "who was that" and "is that a NEW cat over there?"