It's offical

My neighbor and I are now a feral cat rescue - if you can, come support us on FB - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kittens-Impossible/217434024979171

Bec - congrats on your new group ! Having been part of a local org. for several years I know
you will find a lot of pleasure with the animals and so much frustration with the 2-legged creatures.

Oh I hear you - I'm actively involved in No Kill Virginia and I get frustrated sometime with the lack of 'get up and go' I run across! Our little rescue of strays is but a mere tiny part of what I do :) We want to be the 'new breed' of rescuers/advocates...diplomacy and dialogue instead of militant rabid and out of control like some people can get :)

Way to go!

*two thumbs way up!*

We can't help foster feral cats while Joyanna is so young, but kittens... I could probably talk Jim into fostering kittens who have passed their FeLuk & rabies tests. Or are you not getting directly involved with fostering but more with finding homes and advocacy?

A neighbor was bitten a few weeks back by a cat who leaped out of his garbage can, got a trap & caught the cat within a few hours, fortunately animal control said it tested negative for rabies, but I doubt its fate was good. Within the next week, he'd caught 8 more (our feral cat population is way out of control this summer) -- 2 were positive for feline leukemia, and 1 was positive for rabies. This is everybody's problem, or should be... I like the idea of diplomacy & dialog... this is not just a "bleeding heart animal lover" sort of concern, nor should the solution be to kill all "extra" cats.

We're getting them all tested for everything under the sun! They'll be spayed, neutered, vaccinated - they seem pretty healthy, no fleas, no URI's that we can see, we will have kittens!! We have 3 kittens now, we know of at least one more and we 'think' Mama is pregnant again! I hate people who just leave their cats!!! If you can talk him into fostering that would be awesome!!!! There are a few that are truly feral, we're hoping to TNR them (trap, neuter and release) setting up feeder stations and shelter for the winter :-)

Becky, I will work on him! It might not be until after Thanksgiving, though... I know the kittens need help now, but I think I have a better chance of talking him into it as an ongoing thing if I wait until I can make it work out better. Also, he might want some reassurance that fostering kittens won't result in our becoming an 11 cat household, LOL. I'm a good kitten trainer/socializer, though, and you know Joyanna would love it. :-)

Whatever you can do will be awesome!!! IF mama is pregnant we should have kittens in a few weeks, they will of course not be as wild as these little guys :-) They are getting better every day! IF one of them can stand up to Thor and Samson then he/she will live with us :-) Either Odin or Freya :)

Kittens in a few weeks... ooh, that makes me want to talk to him about it right now, but he's looking pretty tired from work this week, so I think I'd better hold off (although I did show him the kitten photo LOL).

Looks like you've got a matched set of black & white kittens, there! The grey & white one looks really sweet in that photo, but I bet she is trouble. It's always the innocent looking ones...

BTW, somebody mentioned recently that I could sign up on Facebook without having a "page" of my own so I could access other FB pages... ? I don't really want to get into uploading stuff on FB at this point, since I'm having trouble finding time for my other online activities as it is. ?

You can get a FB page set up, set the privacy levels to 100%, be unsearchable, no uploading, you decide who you wanna be friends with etc :)

That's probably what I should do, then... I feel like such a dinosaur when people send me FB links and I have to say I'm not "on" FB!

Get hubby to help, or I can walk you through it as well - I set one up for my MIL, she enjoys it - she gets to see 'the kids' etc :)

love your mythic kitty names!

Well, good & bad news, I suppose... I brought up fostering kittens with Jim, and he liked the idea (or at least wasn't opposed, as long as we didn't become more than a 2 cat household). He did think, however, that we (Joyanna, particularly) were probably a year away from being ready to jump into that. I think he has a point... while Joyanna will never love saying good-bye to a kitten, that part of fostering would devastate her now... she has just entered the "mine! mine! mine!" stage, and since Daddy has even more of a soft spot for his daughter than for kitties, we would end up keeping every kitten (good for the kitties, I suppose LOL, but not really the point).

I hope somebody else will come forward to help with the current kittens! I'm sure you'll be able to use "foster families" at any time; unfortunately, there always seems to be another pregnant mama cat around.

I'm a little bummed that we can't take Mama cat when she has her litter and foster her family while we find them forever homes... but I have to admit that Jim made several good points about our (in)ability to take this on this year.

However, since we've at least started a discussion about fostering... Who else has questions? Maybe we can generate some volunteers...

Scritch those babies (and Mama) for me, please!

Becky, I have a number of sm/med/ and large cat carriers to donate if you have a need. LMK Judy

Bec,
Just wanted to know if you are familiar with the "barn buddies" program. Its for ferals who
are not adoptable but need to be moved from their current location after TNV.

Info sharing is always a great thing - a few organizations are linked from the group I'm with
http://www.animalfriendsfoundation.com/limks.html
Somewhere on the AFF site there's pictures of the rubbermaid "shelters" that we make & are
distributed free to those who have colonies. It may be something your group may want to
put together as well.

Cris

Hi Bec, I wish you all the best. I don't know if you know, we are feral cat fans at my house, which prompted me to write about them in the true story, "Tango, the Garden Cat" series here on Dave's Garden. And, would you believe, we recently had TWO new cat sightings that I am really hoping are NOT feral cats. Sadly, they may be though. Last evenings sweet kitty came to our back door begging for the second time for food. He (or she) was very "friendly" and had a sore on its neck. I'm thinking this poor cat was once a house cat, now abandoned. We will trap it, should he or she come back, and take it to the vets for care. And if we have to, we will adopt it...

Good luck and THANK YOU for helping feral cats that DO NOT belong outside. All cats are a domesticated species.

this is a pic of our latest rescue from farmlands in Bridgeton, NJ, her name is Lucky Lucia

Interesting cause, Becky. I wonder where you get your training in diplomacy? I wish more people had that training! :-)

Sadly if I set traps to reduce or eliminate a four cat problem not a single one of the four would be homeless. This remains and most likely will continue to be the larger problem in our suburban community. They catch and carry home our song birds. They poop in my gardens . The only good they are for me is that they catch and eat baby rabbits. As soon as one disappears for any reason a new one shows up in a few weeks. We are not legally permitted to do anything to remove the problem cats. The SPCA will not take them in with out there being a hefty paid at time of delivery fee. They then place some of them to other nice homes that let them roam or if not adopted they are disposed of. The problem then comes back to those who keep cats and let them roam. This is a very common problem that has no nice answer. This in our case is a four out of five average suburban cat homes that let them roam at least some of the time.
Cat ownership has no leagle responsibility what so ever as long as the animal is not mistreated.

Animal Control here will pick up cats, whether they are feral or roaming domestics, but the neighbor I mentioned was releasing kitties he thought had local homes, because he didn't want to deal with the repercussions of "you had my sweet kitty taken to the pound???" But maybe people would be less inclined to let cats roam if they had to pick them up from the pound repeatedly... worked to deal with a roaming dog situation in the area... there's a fee if you have to pick up your animal at the pound, and they won't say who "turned in" the dog, so it's a workable method. It would be much easier on the pets and on everybody if pet owners were simply more responsible!

Blake would go outside with me but was trained to stay close and to come back in when I whistled for him. Eliot wants nothing to do with "out there" other than looking out the window or sniffing the breeze through the screen door. No animal of ours will ever be permitted to simply roam around, nor will they be un-neutered (I don't see us ending up as "official" breeders).

Don't forget the importance of the rabies shots. In many states if a person gets rabies and blames it on your animal they and their close friends must take the two week rabies series of shots at a cost of $1000.00 each. You and your close friends will have to also. None of this is needed if you have proof your animal has it's shots. If your animal was a carrier without shots you could end up paying all of the costs including awards for loss of human life.

Our family cats & dogs have always had rabies shots. Blake and Eliot also got/get Feluk vaccinations... our vet seemed to consider them "optional" for indoor kitties, but we don't. this way, I don't worry if we have a "visiting" cat or kitten here, since the prevention rates of the vaccine are pretty high.

Hiya - I'm back from Jersey :-) Kittens doing good, had a full check-up and they are healthy :-) So is mama, we'll continue this week with the trapping, now that I am back - we'll do our own shots, my girlfriend is a vet tech :-)

Yay for healthy kitties! Those b&w ones are so cute; I hope they get snapped up by a good forever home... and I hope that "pregnant & scared" mama finds a place to call home also.

Joyanna spent last night doing the "mine! mine!" thing with every stuffed animal she came across (her crib was fuller than usual), so I think Jim made the correct & practical call in saying we might be about a year out from being able to foster. :-(

I'm just glad he didn't say "no way!" :-)

Bec--

We used to have feral cats wandering the grounds at our HD.
Of course--they had repeated litters that people that work here adopted them--IF they could trap them!

You may want to call around your HD's or Lowes and ask if they have any--and if they would like
to have them trapped and removed. You would have a good supply.

Here is a problem they cause......they get inside the store and wander around at night, as they DO
catch a lot of mice near the bird seed. BUT--they can also set off the alarms and then
the designated manager HAS TO drive to the store in the middle of the night (no matter the distance)
to turn the alarm off. Finding the offending animal in a huge store is next to impossible.
One issue was a woman who insisted on feeding the cats. She was asked to stop.

Love your kitty picture! Gita

Oh Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllll - we have a new kitty now, looks JUST like Elliot!!

You know I have to go look right away to see if there's a photo on the Facebook page!

Is he a kitten-kitty, or older? You know we need details... and Joyanna just saw the kitten pictures again and said she wants to pet them all.

No picture yet, he's too scared - he's about 6-8 weeks old

Aww, poor baby. Cats react differently in situations like that... Eliot, under his bush, was quivering in terror when my cousins' dog found him, but it sounds like he nearly knocked the dog down in his mad scramble to reach the safe haven of the arms of a critter-loving human. I think he wasn't out very long, and I would term him "scared & alone" rather than "feral." He knew what a litterbox was for and used it like a little gentleman, but I had to show him what to do with solid food in a dish, so I'm guessing his moma cat was in a real home somewhere, and he either ran off and got lost or was run off, perhaps in some way that would explain his odd ongoing fear of men in big boots and diesel truck fumes.

Does this kitten seem to be associated with a particular feral mom-cat, or is he out on his ownesome? Do you have him in safe custody, or do you just know his whereabouts? I hope as many of those cats as possible have shelter tonight... it's going to be cold, not dangerously so but certainly uncomfortably.

He's definitely on the wilder side, he's safely tucked inside in a bathroom - warm, well fed - we're going hunting to see if there are more kittens - we know where his momma is, she was mad as all get out when he got caught late last night - IF there are no more kittens we've got 3 adults to catch - 2 females & 1 huge tom, if they are 'too' feral we might TNR them, we're getting a shelter or two built for the winter & we have feeding stations set up - I know Shawna is keeping the mama we have, I'm going to see about keeping one kitten (all depends on Sammie, hopefully he doesn't think the kitten is a condiment to his dinner) - so we need homes for 3 so far...:-) we're hoping to find homes ourselves, if not, see if we can piggyback with HART & take them to adoption fairs - the 3 are slowly coming around, it's only been a little over a week so I have high hopes they'll settle down :-) the little red one is still too scared, we're giving him 24 hrs before we start handling him

Warm & full tummy will go a long way toward making friends. I'll ask around about homes... for us, after Christmas is probably about the earliest time for a "keeper" kitten, and we're looking into a couple of possibilities there, but we will definitely check in with you when we're looking for a nookitty or able to foster. :-)

Apparently this little kitten is a girl!!! Which makes her very unusual - there are very few completely red females :) She was scared and lonely last night, crying - so Shawna handfed her, wrapped her in a towel and then put her in with the other cats, they did hiss a little but not much and we think they'll get along fine soon :)

Yay!

I keep giving Jim updates on these rescue kittens, and he's started giving me this Look... I think he's getting suspicious. LOL

LOLOLOL I know that look :)

Be very carefull to avoid inbread cats.

OMG Doc, lmbo, perfect! Thanks,

Finally got more pix and of the nookitty - she is adorable and actually easier to handle than the others -

[i]melt...[/i]

I'll show Joyanna when she gets up from her nap... she sure does look like Eliot's little sister!

Oh my, Jill - the little girl, Starla, is such a keeper!! She is beyond lovable, loves, loves to play and bet loved on! It looks like she'll end up with me/us - she is totally fearless and would be perfect with Samson and Thor - the others are still too skittish :( We did discover 2 more kittens, so out we go again to trap tonight and hoping and praying this is it in regards to kittens!! Then we can trap the females and the male and do the TNR on at least the male, we have a carpenter lined up who's going to build us shelters for the winter...:)