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- Aug 4, 2014
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So, I take care of a feral colony in a wooded and mostly enclosed (by fencing) area that’s next to street that’s fairly busy during the day. We’ve lost about 5 cats there in the past year from being hit by cars when they venture out
We noticed a newcomer, Meatloaf, coming around the past couple months, and eventually realized she wasn’t living with the colony, but would show up to eat.
So we started heading over at non-feeding times to see if we could see where she’s coming from, and eventually spotted her on the opposite side of the street across from our colony, with two small kittens.
They appear to be staying in various neighbors yards, so any time we approach them, they flee into the gated yards.
Well, the kittens are about 12 or so weeks now, and Meatloaf has decided she’s done mothering, so has officially moved over to our colony on her own.
But the kittens haven’t followed, and I don’t know why. We’ve seen them visit the colony twice before, so they know it’s more private and food and shelter is there. Once, they were even playing with some of the kittens in our colony who are about a month or two older.
As the situation is, it’s incredibly difficult to trap them where they are. I keep hoping they’ll move to our colony site, but they just haven’t. I’ve started leaving some dry food on top of the fence (it has occasional brick “posts” they can stand on), and they seem to be quite hungry when I do that.
I just don’t know how to go about this.
I can’t safely lure them by slowly moving food across a busy road. There is no safe place for them between where they are, and where my colony starts - it’s either busy road, or heavily used sidewalks where people walk their dogs.
The second option would be trying to trap them, but we haven’t had much luck so far. And if we did trap them, we’d be releasing them in an essentially unfamiliar territory.
If they were to be too disoriented, they could run through the woods, only to find themselves on an interstate highway.
Or, they could know where they are, and then shoot right back over the busy street to where they are now.
I’m just not sure what the heck to do about this. I just want them to be in the woods where it’s much safer for them, as I’ve seen them have to run from people’s dogs a few times now, and we’ve also caught them playing in the street at night (which is when the cars here are much more likely to speed down this road since it’s much less busy then).
Any ideas?
We noticed a newcomer, Meatloaf, coming around the past couple months, and eventually realized she wasn’t living with the colony, but would show up to eat.
So we started heading over at non-feeding times to see if we could see where she’s coming from, and eventually spotted her on the opposite side of the street across from our colony, with two small kittens.
They appear to be staying in various neighbors yards, so any time we approach them, they flee into the gated yards.
Well, the kittens are about 12 or so weeks now, and Meatloaf has decided she’s done mothering, so has officially moved over to our colony on her own.
But the kittens haven’t followed, and I don’t know why. We’ve seen them visit the colony twice before, so they know it’s more private and food and shelter is there. Once, they were even playing with some of the kittens in our colony who are about a month or two older.
As the situation is, it’s incredibly difficult to trap them where they are. I keep hoping they’ll move to our colony site, but they just haven’t. I’ve started leaving some dry food on top of the fence (it has occasional brick “posts” they can stand on), and they seem to be quite hungry when I do that.
I just don’t know how to go about this.
I can’t safely lure them by slowly moving food across a busy road. There is no safe place for them between where they are, and where my colony starts - it’s either busy road, or heavily used sidewalks where people walk their dogs.
The second option would be trying to trap them, but we haven’t had much luck so far. And if we did trap them, we’d be releasing them in an essentially unfamiliar territory.
If they were to be too disoriented, they could run through the woods, only to find themselves on an interstate highway.
Or, they could know where they are, and then shoot right back over the busy street to where they are now.
I’m just not sure what the heck to do about this. I just want them to be in the woods where it’s much safer for them, as I’ve seen them have to run from people’s dogs a few times now, and we’ve also caught them playing in the street at night (which is when the cars here are much more likely to speed down this road since it’s much less busy then).
Any ideas?