TNR and ear tips

[ElizabethBise]

Just trapped 8 adult cats and a few kittens for our TNR program, I’m fostering the kittens to see if they’re sociable, and the adults were just fixed at a clinic. My friend who took them to the clinic forgot to check the box for ear tipping so the adults were unfortunately not ear tipped. We have more to catch in this colony so any that end up recaptured can get ear tipped later. Any suggestions for how to mark these cats in some way? A few are fairly distinct but 4 are all black and the same age so very indistinguishable.

 

[nurseangel]

Bless you for taking care of these feral kittens and cats. Unfortunately, I can't think of any way to determine if cats that are similar in appearance has been spayed or neutered. I am interested in this, as I hope I never end up in the situation of having to trap again, but one never knows when it might happen.

 

[poolcat]

I did the same thing... didn't think to ask for ear tipping when I took one of my neighbor's stray cats to be neutered. So I took lots of photos before releasing him.

Are you able to get close to these cats? All I can think of is to brush a little fast-drying paint on the back of their necks while they're distracted with food. It would have to be where a spot-on flea medicine would go so they couldn't lick it off or kick it off. Hopefully it would last until you're able to neuter the entire colony.

 

[Norachan]

Having recently been trapped and spayed/neutered I think these cats are probably going to be quite cautious of traps. So if the reason that you need to be able to distinguish between them is so that you don't take any cats that have already been fixed back for surgery again the chance of re-trapping is going to be pretty slim. Were the females flank spayed or belly spayed? I guess the vets will have tattooed them so that any vets they get taken to in future knows they've already been fixed?