I have to now say good things about your ability to reason. You got it right. I’ve spent hours explaining it to people face to face and they still didn’t seem to understand as well as you did. Good work! I hope you get an A on your paper, you deserve it.
Thank you! God I hope I get full credit. I have all really good homework grades, I’m doing great in lab, and I have a 97 on my second test. That 63 on my first one is killing me though. If I get full credit on this paper, I’ll get 20 extra points on that test.
Stray calico kitten has moved into my back yard. And despite the inspiration of this thread, I still haven’t picked up a cat trap. Always something I’ll do tomorrow … 
That’s wonderful work kinkinippon and flatlined.
I spay all ferals and strays that end up in my yard. It’s heartbreaking to see sick litters.
congoddwarf, what happens is that some other irresponsible person gets an animal and turns it out, and they eventually find their way to a pack or a colony. There is no shortage of these animals until peoples attitudes change.
Hey, flatlined, has Steve been released to the wild yet? Did he ever lose any wariness of you?
SCSimmons, you might be able to rent a trap from animal control or one of the local rescue group. On Monday, call around and ask. If you aren’t making trapping cats a habit, you might not want to put out the money to buy one. We (my rescue group) doesn’t actually rent traps out, but we ask for a deposit to be sure that we get our traps back. Thank you for being willing to help the calico, many people would just turn a blind eye her way.
LurkerInNJ, thank you for your efforts. We can’t save the world, but we can be the world for one cat at a time. Kinki has told me via PM that now that the area around the reactor has been closed, there are almost 6,000 pets that will be left to die. She also mentioned that one of her friends is still sneaking in to grab them. Their dedication is awe inspiring. My efforts pale in compairson.
Morgyn, Steve stayed for 10 days and then I let him go. I’ve seen him, he knows when dinnertime is and actually gets as close as 20 feet to me. He looks much better now that he’s not roaming and fighting as much. Another advantage to having a fixed colony is that they stay closer to home. I do worry when I haven’t seen one for a few days.
I’ve seen a new cat at the feeding station recently. She is either a housepet that someone lets roam or a new stray. She won’t let me get close, but looks healthy and well fed. I’m going to set the trap tonight and see what happens. Its always a hard choice with cats like this. I don’t want to take someone’s pet to adoptions, but I also don’t want to release a dumped cat that could be adopted out. My usual compromise in this situation is to have the cat vetted, then keep it for a couple of weeks while I look for “lost cat” posters. (I don’t know if kitteh is female, I’m assuming so because she looks female to me.)
We just got new little visitors at work a couple of weeks ago. In just about the worst place possible. Cute, I’ll grant you. But I really didn’t need the stress of newborn feral kittens in a old waste drum in a chemical storage area.
And of course mom moved them after a week, as moms are wont to do. And dropped one down an old unused rusty drain line, where it was panicked and complaining up a storm 
( how she fucked up that bad I don’t know, I assume she went looking for a new den kitten in mouth, got stuck, panicked and dropped it - she seems young and inexperienced ). Me and a co-worker spent a good ~three hours trying to fish it out. Eventually county animal control came and took it ( mom having failed to return and claim it after a few hours post-rescue and it was late night by then ). Apparently technically policy in that county is to euthanize them if under two pounds and it was maybe a week+ old at the time, eyes just barely open. But the animal control guy said that he had excellent success pawning young ones like that off on the local soft-hearted emergency vets, so I’m hoping it went on to a better life.
I had some forlorn hopes of maybe live-trapping mama ( for TNR ) and rest of her adorable spawn ( with an eye towards getting them fixed and adopted ) once they were over 4-5 weeks old and partially weaned, but she has disappeared, probably onto a neighboring property ( there are about 2 billion hiding spots within a quarter mile of here, including a fenced off county-property creekside and abandoned industrial greenhouses by the score ). Ah, well. Feral cats can be depressing.
Says many bad words. Tamerlane, you are now on my hero list. Thank you so much for trying. You and your coworker did the best you could. The world really needs more people like you.
Offers to share my mantra…“I can’t save the world, but I can be the world for one cat at a time”. You did the best you could and maybe you changed the world for one kitten. You did your best and more than many would have done. Thank you so much for your efforts.
Provide a place for her now, so she can get used to it.
One thing that works well is to get low cardboard flat trays, like the ones on the top & bottom of many appliances – about a couple of feet square, but only 4-5 inches tall. Place them on top of each other, so you have a closed space 8-10 inches high. (I taped the back side together, so the top stays in place, but you can lift it up to look inside. That was useful later.) Cut a small flap for an entry hole in the bottom box. (Maybe a second one on another side – some cats want an emergency exit, too.) Put some rags or shredded paper in the bottom, and put it in a secluded corner. Then leave it for her to get accustomed to.
Don’t open it while she is in there, don’t play with her there, etc. You can entice her out with food or a string toy, but don’t open it or reach in to get her – let that be her quiet, hiding place. It’s a small, dark, quiet place; the kind that cats like to choose to give birth. So she may use this location to give birth.
But expect that she will still move the kittens a few days after birth. (This is instinct, to get them away from the birthplace, with smells that may attract predators.) Sometimes if you do a complete change of the rags or paper bedding it’s enough, but most mother cats still move their kittens. You could even provide a 2nd spot like this, different size & shape, and in a different location – she might choose this as the alternate location. But they often choose a rather inaccessible location; under a dresser or other furniture, beneath a bed, etc. And personally, I’ve never had much luck changing their mind once they have selected a place.
Best I’ve done is for a cat that moved her kittens to centered under my bed – she accepted me moving them onto a cardboard tray that I could pull out a few times a day to check on the kittens, and then push back into place. [And she made a nest for the kittens out of my dirty undershirts that she took from my laundry basket. When those kittens got older and started to crawl around, they would climb up onto me, and fall asleep next to my armpits. Took a while before I connected that up!]
Thanks, but she already gave birth a five days ago now, almost a full month after I thought she would (shows what I know). I like your box idea and will remember it if the situation comes up again. Luckily, the cat became quite socialized in the last month and now seems perfectly happy to loll about out in the open with the kittens and run up to anyone who comes in the door now, provided the kittens are napping and not actively nursing.
Cute!
Great work you’re doing!
I’m involved in a somewhat similar project for horses: the American Horse Council Unwanted Horse Coalition’s Operation Gelding. Bigger animals, requiring more post-op care, and still operating on a bit smaller scale.
Also, these aren’t feral animals; just stallions whose owners can’t afford the cost to have them gelded. By doing this, we eliminate a breeding stallion, and all the foals he would have produced. A small step to reducing the number of unwanted horses in the country.
Does that really work, though? Pretty much every time I’ve heard about controlling the breeding of a mammalian species it’s the females that count. Because, well, even a single intact male is more than capable of impregnating any fertile females in an area.
I’d like to preface this by expressing my awe and admiration for all of you incredibly gracious and kind people, helping out the kittehs, being so generous with your time and resources. I love kittehs. I have a big orange tom who was a homeless cat in the neighborhood I moved into; he came to my door, and asked if I needed a housecat. He proceeded to demolish the mouse infestation and is now a dear and devoted friend.
Anyway, (and I know this is an unpopular sentiment) I think it’s ironic that people are so aware of the effects of overpopulation, homelessness, and competition for resources among cats; and yet we don’t think to apply this same reasoning to humans. Global population has almost tripled since I was born, and I’m not even that old.
I’m just sayin’.
What does helping with feral cats in the neighborhood have to do with global population? What do you propose we do to prevent human over-reproduction? Trap, neuter and release? Add something to the city water supply? Convince more countries to adopt China’s one-child-per-family policy?
Thank you for your kind words and thank you for taking in a homeless kitty. So many people would have shut the door in his face.
I do have to say that you might be making unfounded assumptions, though. I can’t speak for all rescue groups, but in our core group there are 6 women and 1 man. Everyone but myself and the man is past the childbearing age, I am fixed and the man is in his mid 50’s.
There are a total of 3 children that have been born to the core members. Two of the core members are also involved with Planned Parenthood and three of us are active in a local group that helps unwed mothers, with the focus on getting them out of poverty through education and birth control.
We do care about overpopulation in humans, but as needscoffee correctly pointed out, TNR doesn’t work nearly as well on humans as it does cats.
t-bonham@scc.net Good on you! Horses are much harder than cats and dogs. I read very sad stories weekly about people who can’t afford to take care of their horses and just let them go to fend for themselves. The local horse rescue groups are overwhelmed. Its great to meet another rescue person, keep up the good work!
btw, needscoffee, do you have more pics for your thread? We do need to be sure that the kittens are still cute 
It does NOT work – in a feral population. Thus in the wild horse populations out west, they have largely given up on this. (Though they do geld captured stallions, but just for ease of keeping them, and to increase the chance of them being adopted.) They have even found that treating the mares is difficult – it’s much more expensive to spay a mare, and temporary treatments like hormone contraceptives are temporary, so they need to re-capture the mare and re-treat her each year.
But we are not doing this in a feral population. Our cases are situations where the owner of a small group of horses has an intact stallion (often a young colt reaching breeding age) in their herd. If nothing is done, that colt can breed any fertile mares in the herd (often closely related mares, thus producing poor-quality foals). The owner usually doesn’t have enough money or land to keep the colt in a separate pasture, and does not have enough money to pay for gelding the colt. By helping geld this colt, we can prevent the birth of accidental additional foals at this one farm.
The fact that a neighboring farm a half-mile down the road has an intact stallion is not relevant. In the wild, that stallion would breed these neighboring mares & produce foals. But not in this case – the neighbor’s stallion is confined on his farm, and won’t breed these mares accidentally. Since domesticated horses are confined on their own farms, gelding a stallion will prevent unwanted foals on that farm.
Ah, I see. Yes, that makes sense then.
Interesting - I’d always been under the impression that the ginger boys were by and large utter sweethearts. Certainly our two were. Though #2 was a scaredy cat, he’d spook at anything unusual - but if there was nothing terrifying around, he was the biggest love-sponge on the planet. The older one? nothing phased him.
There are two ginger boys in the Bodoni household right now. One of them is the biggest love sponge you ever met. The other one is friendly enough, but he likes to wrestle, and only occasionally will he cuddle. But when he wants to cuddle, he’s all purrs and snuggles. The wrestler will insist on his daddy playing with him every night about 10 PM.