newbie here

Hi,
Well let me try this again. New at this. My name is Doreen. I have been searching for people in my are who can help me with a colony of cats. I've never been a cat person. So I don't know how I got my self into caring for a colony. Well actually I do. I saw a cat nearly starving, fed it and now it's been a year. Long story short, the cats are at a school that I drop children off at. The teachers want them out of there. They have had the animal control people trapping them and taking them to a shelter that is not a NO KILL shelter. A janitor at one time payed for some cats to be fixed, but animal control came and took them a way anyway. What I need is some hands on help. Myself and a friend bought traps, but we don't want to go through all the work of trapping them, having them fixed only to have the school come along and take them away. If any one has any suggestions please let me know.
I ordered dvd's from Alley Cat Alley's and was thinking of calling them. All the places in N.J that they have listed on there site are really do not implement TNR. I need an actuall organization in this area.
Well thanks for taking the time to read this. Any help would be appreciated.
Doreen

Welcome to the site Doreen! Thank you for caring for these cat.

I'll move this to Caring for Strays & Ferals for more help for you.

No offense, Doreen, but even if you never were a cat person before, you are a catlady now. Welcome to the club. If you care enough about the cats to feed, trap, speuter, etc...you are a bonafide member of the catlady club!

Can you try talking to someone at the school, let them know your plans, and see if you stabilize the colony if they will let it remain? The problem with just feeding strays, is they reproduce even faster. If you feed, and spay and neuter (speuter) them, they will quit reproducing. Then the colony becomes stable, and is much less annoying to the surrounding community. You can get more info from the AlleyCat Allies site, about how just removing the cats, always leaves one or two wild ones to keep reproducing. Then instead of having 20 half tame cats, you get 40 truly wild ones!

Best of luck, catlady Doreen!
Signed, catlady Becky

Hi Becky,
Yeah I guess I am the cat lady now. There is one cat there that I think eventually I'll be able to pet. I at times have been at the end of my rope as far as getting help. I've actually had a cat rescue person tell me I had to think of them as wild animals and if I couldn't just stop feeding them then to only do it every 3 days. Yeah right.
The main problem is the teachers. And I think it's only a couple. Probably don't like any animals not just cats.I had a person e-mail me and she wanted some info about the school and cats. She lives about 1 hour from me. She wants to write a letter to the board of ed. I think she may help. My problem is I don't want to lose my job. I drive a school bus for a company that works with the school. The school has already threatened a janitor to stop feeding the cats or she will be fired. That is what I heard through the grapevine anyway.
Well thanks for the welcome and wish me luck. :O)
Doreen

Originally Posted by time4crafting

A janitor at one time payed for some cats to be fixed, but animal control came and took them a way anyway. What I need is some hands on help. Myself and a friend bought traps, but we don't want to go through all the work of trapping them, having them fixed only to have the school come along and take them away. If any one has any suggestions please let me know.

Doreen

Click to expand...

Welcome Doreen...if the only barrier to helping these cats is a fear that they will be removed, then Beckiboo is correct, you should approach the school with your plans...but that will need to include spaying/neutering the whole colony. Feeding cats without spaying/neutering only encourages a growth in the feral cat population which is why many locations do not want people feeding alone. Although ordering the CD is a good start...to show that you really mean to help these cats does mean that you start trapping and spaying/neutering in the meantime. Alley Cat Allies has a great section with information on trapping:

http://www.alleycat.org/resources_care.html

Here is a list of groups that do TNR in NJ:

http://www.alleycat.org/orgs.html#nj

Katie