- Joined
- Nov 14, 2018
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Hi there - this might be a bit long, I apologize in advance!
A couple of years ago we had a feral kitty we started feeding. She was a gorgeous dilute tortie. She finally got to a point where she wouldn’t run completely away when we came out to feed her, just to the other end of the deck. We discovered she was pregnant and while we never found her kittens, we did eventually trap her, have her spayed and vaccinated and returned her to our yard. We named her Chipotle because of her spicy attitude! Several months later, this past January, another kitty started coming around and we immediately knew she was Chipotle’s daughter. She was almost identical to her, dilute tortie with almost the same markings, the only difference being she is long-haired. We named her CJ (Chipotle Jr lol) Matching up the dates of when we stopped seeing Chipotle pregnant, CJ was about 9 months old. She wasn’t consistent at first, but around mid March she started coming daily, and we soon discovered she was pregnant
At that point Chipotle stopped coming around, which we were really sad about but we also know there are others in our neighborhood who feed stray/feral kitties. We were feeding her wet food since it was cold and snowy, we got heated bowls so she had fresh water, and we made an area under our deck stairs where she would be shielded as we have a large snoball bush in the corner. She spent a lot of time under our house in the crawl space as well. Mid-April she was no longer pregnant. We searched high and low for those kittens and could never find them. I started counting down the weeks until her kittens would be 8 weeks old because we wanted to trap her to get her spayed and vaccinated as well. During this time, somehow she started to trust me and at the end of April she started letting me pet the top of her head! I was on cloud nine! This pretty quickly progressed to her letting me pet her while she ate and she would even rub on my legs! About 7 weeks in, one day we looked out to see her waiting for food, and out popped a kitten from under the stairs!! We couldn’t believe it! That first day we only saw one. The next day she had all SIX with her! This was May 30th. They were eating both the wet and dry food and drinking water from the bowls so we did what we had to do. We trapped all six kittens and then used the kittens to trap her. I never felt so awful as when I had to trick her into the trap using her kittens but I had to do what was best for her and that was getting her vetted so she didn’t have to go through this again. I am a volunteer at our local shelter and my plan was to keep the kittens for a few days to get them used to human contact and then get them posted on our Facebook page for adoption. We got CJ in the next day to be spayed, combo tested, vaccinated and microchipped. My daughter works at our vet so thankfully they got her in that quickly. She stayed in an extra large dog crate next door in my mom’s spare room for a week while she recovered. She still let me pet her but she was unhappy. After a week, it broke my heart but we let her back outside. She spent a full 24 hours frantically calling for and looking for her babies and it about broke me because I had them right inside my large bathroom 
Thankfully after a day she pretty quickly went back to her normal happy demeanor, coming for food and pets a couple times a day. Four of her kittens were adopted into wonderful homes and the other two were adopted by me and my family 
In the past couple of weeks CJ has started really wanting me to love on her a lot. She allows my husband and daughter to pet her as well though not nearly how she is with me. We put a large outdoor cushion outside for her and she lounges on it, even napping several hours every afternoon! She is very happy. In just a few months it’s going to be cold again so we will be building her a home that will stay on the deck. It will have insulation and blankets etc. I am starting to consider trying to bring her indoors. We have a good size bedroom we could cat proof and let her get acclimated to the indoors in. The entirety of this post was a back story to ask the question - based on her behavior do you think she would acclimate to bring indoors? We believe based on her frantic searching for the kittens when we released her after surgery that her melancholy while indoors recovering had more to do with her wanting her kittens than it did with being in the house. Thoughts and opinions welcome. If I can figure out how I’d love to share some pics or a small video of her 
if you made it this far, bless you and thank you!!!
A couple of years ago we had a feral kitty we started feeding. She was a gorgeous dilute tortie. She finally got to a point where she wouldn’t run completely away when we came out to feed her, just to the other end of the deck. We discovered she was pregnant and while we never found her kittens, we did eventually trap her, have her spayed and vaccinated and returned her to our yard. We named her Chipotle because of her spicy attitude! Several months later, this past January, another kitty started coming around and we immediately knew she was Chipotle’s daughter. She was almost identical to her, dilute tortie with almost the same markings, the only difference being she is long-haired. We named her CJ (Chipotle Jr lol) Matching up the dates of when we stopped seeing Chipotle pregnant, CJ was about 9 months old. She wasn’t consistent at first, but around mid March she started coming daily, and we soon discovered she was pregnant
At that point Chipotle stopped coming around, which we were really sad about but we also know there are others in our neighborhood who feed stray/feral kitties. We were feeding her wet food since it was cold and snowy, we got heated bowls so she had fresh water, and we made an area under our deck stairs where she would be shielded as we have a large snoball bush in the corner. She spent a lot of time under our house in the crawl space as well. Mid-April she was no longer pregnant. We searched high and low for those kittens and could never find them. I started counting down the weeks until her kittens would be 8 weeks old because we wanted to trap her to get her spayed and vaccinated as well. During this time, somehow she started to trust me and at the end of April she started letting me pet the top of her head! I was on cloud nine! This pretty quickly progressed to her letting me pet her while she ate and she would even rub on my legs! About 7 weeks in, one day we looked out to see her waiting for food, and out popped a kitten from under the stairs!! We couldn’t believe it! That first day we only saw one. The next day she had all SIX with her! This was May 30th. They were eating both the wet and dry food and drinking water from the bowls so we did what we had to do. We trapped all six kittens and then used the kittens to trap her. I never felt so awful as when I had to trick her into the trap using her kittens but I had to do what was best for her and that was getting her vetted so she didn’t have to go through this again. I am a volunteer at our local shelter and my plan was to keep the kittens for a few days to get them used to human contact and then get them posted on our Facebook page for adoption. We got CJ in the next day to be spayed, combo tested, vaccinated and microchipped. My daughter works at our vet so thankfully they got her in that quickly. She stayed in an extra large dog crate next door in my mom’s spare room for a week while she recovered. She still let me pet her but she was unhappy. After a week, it broke my heart but we let her back outside. She spent a full 24 hours frantically calling for and looking for her babies and it about broke me because I had them right inside my large bathroom Thankfully after a day she pretty quickly went back to her normal happy demeanor, coming for food and pets a couple times a day. Four of her kittens were adopted into wonderful homes and the other two were adopted by me and my family In the past couple of weeks CJ has started really wanting me to love on her a lot. She allows my husband and daughter to pet her as well though not nearly how she is with me. We put a large outdoor cushion outside for her and she lounges on it, even napping several hours every afternoon! She is very happy. In just a few months it’s going to be cold again so we will be building her a home that will stay on the deck. It will have insulation and blankets etc. I am starting to consider trying to bring her indoors. We have a good size bedroom we could cat proof and let her get acclimated to the indoors in. The entirety of this post was a back story to ask the question - based on her behavior do you think she would acclimate to bring indoors? We believe based on her frantic searching for the kittens when we released her after surgery that her melancholy while indoors recovering had more to do with her wanting her kittens than it did with being in the house. Thoughts and opinions welcome. If I can figure out how I’d love to share some pics or a small video of her if you made it this far, bless you and thank you!!!
Secondly, with all the progress made, I think she should be indoors immediately rather than stay out for the winter since you already have a safe room for her and on top of that, her other two kittens are indeed the house and this will make things much easier to acclimate her.
This morning, I had our large dog crate on the deck and fed her directly in front of it. I placed the bowl a little ways in and she put her front legs inside and kept eating. I took a deep breath, popped her booty in and shut the door. Took half a second to acknowledge it actually happened then got her inside! She is confused and somewhat upset as I would expect but I’m still able to pet her. She ate a few bites of dry food, a treat stick and has used the litter box once. I had intended for her not to able to see out the window but she managed to get on the window sill. It did not seem to make her upset so the blinds are up for now. The cat tree we got her has a hut in the bottom and she’s been hanging out there. I go next door and check on her every so often. After dinner I’ll go over and spend a couple hours in the room with her. I have two cameras set up in the room so I can watch her at all times. I’m hopeful and optimistic, but expect it won’t be entirely smooth sailing. Will keep you posted!! 
Looking forward to your next update.
