I bottlefed a few fosters that were feral. One in particular was so so needy and nearly dead when I got him. He was maybe 3 weeks old. He was brown til I had given him several baths turned out to be nearly all white with a very few grey stripes. I bottle fed him 6 weeks and taught him how to litter box and eat solid food. He would get under my hair at the back of my neck any time I was still. I really, really had to force myself not to adopt him. I go see him regularly, at his forever home. He’s about 4yo now. When I see him, he crawls right up to my neck and tries to get under my hair. He purrs like crazy. His forever Mom said he doesn’t do that to any one else. He’s a good cat and they really love him.
Aw Beck, thats really sweet. They say you never forget your first crush, must be true for cats too(some anyway)
My late Other Shoe’s mom found a feral kitten about 3 or 4 weeks old. (Well, technically, their beagle found a kitten. They had, like, 7 or 10 housecats at the time anyway.) Little kitten had to be bottle fed for a couple weeks, and came complete with a massive ringworm infestation all over her face.
looks over at sleeping lump of fur 18 inches away
Can’t be tamed, my ass.
That thing is literally within 5 feet of me all day & all night, now that I work from home full time. Sleeps with me, either by my ankles, or by my arms so I can half-hold her like a stuffed teddy bear. Rolls over if I so much as glance her direction, to show off her floofy tummy and beg for more scritches.
If you know where to look, she’s still got scars on her nose from the ringworm.
Five years ago, I found a tiny coal-black ball of fluff crying by himself by my building’s garbage cans. We took him in, and after establishing his social position vis-a-vis our older cat (specifically, he’s in charge, she’s terrified of him), he went on to grow up into a warm, cuddly, playful, ginormous ball of lard.
Not necessarily where I live, and anyway, so are humans.
I don’t get what you’re saying besides you living within cats’ natural range. Are you OK with them running rampant and killing off native species because humans are doing the same?
My family had a few cats growing up most of which were from someone trying to get rid of kittens they found in their yard. The sweetest and friendliest of the bunch was a feral kitten who was abandoned or orphaned when she was about four(?) weeks old. She had to be hand fed with a syringe every few hours. She was a scruffy pathetic looking little thing but she was healthy her whole life until she died around the age of 15.
My friend was also adopted by an adult feral cat. My friend used to feed it on her porch every day. One time, the cat came in her house and didn’t ever want to leave even when given the opportunity. She was very sweet to my friend but otherwise shy around people.
With orphaned or abandoned cats there is no choice- you can buy powdered kitten milk formula to feed them (get the good stuff, not the cheap shit, it does make a difference). Also, very young kittens are blind and helpless, besides feeding them you have to help them urinate and defecate, and keep them clean and warm.
Well, so are people. And we’re a long way from the Serengeti Plains, too. So what?
Nice whattaboutism.
Check out TinyKittens Rescue. They specialize in feral cats. The short story is that, handled properly, it is possible to get adult or even senior ferals to turn in their feral cards.
You might also want to see if there are any TNR groups in your area. They can get the adults spuetered. About 1 in 4 feral kittens survive, and the mammas can have up to 3 litters a year, which is very, very hard on their bodies. TNR saves a lot of lives.
If you live in the Scottish woodlands, African desert, Chinese mountains, or anyplace else with genuine wildcats, you should not mess with them, but normal feral cats in the city or countryside should be neutered and returned to their place afterwards.
I just wanna get “speutered” into the general language. What a great alternative to the multisyllabic “spayed and neutered” runaround.
My mom is one of the key figures in her neighborhood’s catch-and-release spay program. There’s a couple (we think siblings) who live on/around/under her front porch, and who are by now closer to being outdoor pets than strays (especially the female, who will actually refuse to let you feed her until after she’s been petted). There have been a lot of others over the years, but some have died, some have moved on, and some we don’t know what’s become of them.
And why is it ‘spayed or neutered’ anyway? We have a perfectly common and understandable word for what is done to the males: castrated. Why do we need to be euphemistic about that?
To reverse it, what is done with the females is perfectly well covered by ‘neutered’, so why don’t we just use the single word?
Neutering: Overarching term for the removal of reproductive organs.
Castrating: Most common form of male neutering.
Spaying: Female neutering.
They all have a time or place for proper usage :). I suspect people( maybe more men )found the word castration cringey and neutering or fixing was inserted as a neutral-sounding euphemism. Meanwhile spaying was always a term used specifically for non-human animals, so didn’t have the same cringe effect.
I inherited a cat from my sister. He was rescued off the NYC streets and neutered before my sister adopted him. Actually I inherited two cats, but the one we kept was the one that successfully hid when it came time to go to bide-a-wee after a couple of weeks in our apartment. I just didn’t have it in me to chase him down and take him away after the first fiasco. The only sign of life from him for the first few weeks was his business in the litter box and disappearing food and water. Otherwise he was invisible.
We’ve had him for about 10 years now. After the initial wariness wore off he pretty much always came to me for pets but only in the past year or so did he start settling down in my lap (only me). When we first got him, the rustling of plastic bags and the intake of my breath would set him off running. Forget about picking him and holding him. He was traumatized somehow when he was little but we can only guess. Rattling plastic bags still makes him clench if not run away. He has no interest whatsoever in leaving the apartment. He’s cool with the way things are and he’s not going to rock the boat.
He’s mellowing out bit by bit as he gets older but he’ll never be like the cats I had growing up. He’s just a skittish little guy and I think that’s the way he’ll stay.
Some friends of mine took in a pregnant feral female for the kittens’ sake. They thoroughly socialized the kittens – they’re as friendly as any cats you’re likely to find – but they planned to have mom spayed and release her, as she wanted nothing to do with humans. They gave mom her own area and stayed away from it. She was as hostile to humans as any cat you’re likely to find.
However, after seeing all the fun her kids were having, mom came around. She even approaches people now and nudges their hands to be petted. Their plan now is to try to place her in a home, as they already have seven cats in-house.
Those cats sound pretty tame to me. A friend of mine got a feral cat and I went over to her apartment, and she said “it’s in here, but you won’t see it, I never see it.” About a week later she said she saw it come out and eat some food she put out but she couldn’t approach it. I remember getting glimpses of it darting between hiding places out of the corner of my eye. I’m not sure how things evolved with her, but if you can pick a cat up, it’s pretty tame in my opinion.
I don’t remember having to help her pee or poop. I also thought that the kitten formula was premixed but maybe my brother was mixing it ahead of time for us. I may have forgotten the details over the last couple decades. She was pretty helpless. I don’t remember if she was blind but she certainly didn’t move much under her own power.
It occurs to me for purposes of this thread, feral cats shouldn’t really include kittens. If you get a kitten under 12 weeks or so, it’s going to acclimate to people and grow up like any other cat. If you get an adult feral cat, I’m guessing it’s more likely to be skittish or violent with people. It probably takes a while for a cat to learn to be a real feral cat with the questionable behaviors that entails.
Usually. The older they are, the longer it seems to take - i.e. 12 weeks old is typically a fair bit more work than 6 weeks old. And I’ve talked to people who do/did a lot of TNR and kitten socializing who say that very occasionally you’d get one( usually one of the older ones )that simply wouldn’t tame down enough to be adopted by normal folks. Those would end up going to “expert volunteers” willing to put up with a unsociable, semi-feral cat.