Feral Kitten

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There is a feral kitten living under or around my apartment building (it’s an old, converted house). Several of us have started feeding him or her, and the most cat-savvy neighbor and I have decided that I’m going to adopt him/her.

She/he (who will now be called Peanut) seems to be about 10-12 weeks old. We haven’t seen any sign of the mama or any siblings. Probably the only reason that Peanut is hanging around is that the dominant apartment-house kitty is ill and is on ‘inside patrol’ for a little while.

So, I’m giving Peanut food and water, and hanging out in the evening when I put the food out. I’m also having (very inane) conversations with Peanut to get him or her used to my voice. I’ve also gotten a bunch of damn mosquito bites doing this.

I know that once I coax Peanut into accepting me, we are in for a trip to the vet for the full workup.

My question is: besides leaving out food and water and talking to the kitty, what do I do now?

I know I have to wait for Peanut to approach me, but then what do I do? Do I bring the baby inside right away? I have litter because the dominant apartment cat likes to visit, and I’ll have kitten food because I’ll be feeding the Peanut … Or do I wait and establish more trust? If it was an adult cat I’d be more inclined to wait, but this is a baby kitty - very vulnerable.

I’ve never dealt with a feral cat before, and I’m not sure I’d try with an adult. But this one is such a sweet baby! I’ll post photos when I can take them, but I don’t want to do anything to scare Peanut off right now.

So: cat-savvy Dopers - I need advice!

2

You might want to contact your local humane society or cat rescue organization (if there is one) and borrow a trap. The sooner you can get your hands on Peanut, the better your chances of socializing him/her. I’ve worked in feral cat TNR for years, and it is very easy to socialize a kitten once you can get your hands on them. I usually used gloves for the first couple of “hands-on” sessions, just to be safe. Some cats just seem to want to be socialized - my Sugar Magnolia was the kitten of feral parents, yet she let me pick her up the first time she saw me.

The Alley Cat Allies website might have some information you can use.

Thank you for taking care of a homeless kitten.

3

Best cat my folks ever had was a feral stray. They fed him until he got used to seeing them, then he was easy to catch. I think he wanted to be “caught”, he pretty much moved right in when he figured out that’s where the grub was.

He was a grand old boy, lived to be right at 20 years old. Never got named, he was always just “Cat”.

4

I had a ferral kitten that wandered up several years ago, when I had 3 tame cats living with me. Ferral Kitty got friendly with my real cats, and I guess he figured out there was food in the house. For a while, I would leave the door standing open so he could come and go without feeling threatened. He got pretty comfortable being in the house after a while, and he’d just come in with the rest of them when I got home from work. Eventually, Ferral Kitty would eat pasta off my fork (if I held it out for him far away from my body) and sleep on my bed (if he thought I was already asleep). He never would let me touch him, though, so of course we never could get to the vet. I’d hoped to bring him with me when I moved from that house, but he wouldn’t fall for any of the traps I tried.

When I was a little girl, I did once lure a stray cat with cheese slices. Throw out little tiny bits, so he/she will believe you are the Source of All Good Things.

Good luck with your little ferral Peanut! Show us pictures when he gets a little friendlier, 'kay?

5

Aw, little Peanut. I second the trap idea - best to get kitty off the streets and into a safe house ASAP. Actually, since she’s so small, maybe you can tempt her with yummy tuna and just grab her up and put her in a box and whisk her off to the vet.

The vet will probably tell you all this, but keep the kitten away from any other cats for awhile - she might have an infectious disease like distemper or FIV, which would be heart-breaking on its own, but you don’t want to lose all the cats in the building.

Good for you for taking in a feral. I wanted to try my hand at feral rehabilitation before I got my cat - maybe I’ll give it a try in the future. I love cats, and I know that they respond to a kind, calm voice and demeanour - talking to Peanut is a great idea. I talk to my kitties all the time, and they talk right back.

6

Get the kitty caught ASAP.

Then, in some sort of cage, make sure it has a place to get under something to feel safe.

Use welding glover or heavy work gloves to handle at first. we put them in Crown Royal bags to carry around and sit with them laying in our lap or chest while reading or watching TV or just talking quietly to them. In the bag, they can feel you, their head is out ( tie the bag around their neck so their head is out ) but they can’t do anything with their claws and seem to settle down real quick.

If they start stressing, let them go hide for a while. Lots of hand feeding and touching with never a threatening or quick move will tame them down quick if they are ever going to, 10 - 12 weeks is getting pretty long for them to lose the feral if they are really wild.

YMMV

7

Another vote for get the kitty ASAP. Another vote for keeping it in a cage inside where it can feel secure with a little nook to hide under. Domina Kitty will seem very, very threatening to soon-to-not-be-feral kitty, so she’ll need her own space.

8

After you catch kitty, make sure you obtain and bring a stool sample along to the vet’s to check for internal parasites. Kittens, especially strays, are pretty much guaranteed to have worms.

9

Both cats we had growing up were strays (TC=The Cat, and LC=Little Cat - we kids couldn’t agree on names and eventually gave up trying new ones :smiley: ). We currently have Nixie, who was a feral kitten and is now 14.

Try and get this one ASAP and acustom it to human contact. Nixie was about the same age when we got her, and is the suckiest cat we have ever had when she wants to be, but is a flailing cloud of sharp pointy bits if you try and handle her when she isn’t in the mood.

10

My brother was able to borrow a trap from the ASPCA to catch the three feral cats loitering around his backyard. I ended up adopting them. They were each from the same litter and about ten months old, which I gather is old to adopt feral cats, but they seem to have adjusted very well, so there’s plenty of hope for your guy.

11

Riverbed (on the left) came to live with me under pretty much the same circumstances, at roughly the same age. It was cold and raining, and she was hanging around by my house (we think she saw the boys in the window and decided we must have a black cat farm), so my mom brought some food outside to her. We thought the poor thing must be starving, since she practically climbed mom’s leg to get it. After a couple of days we brought her into the house and put her in the back hall, so she’d be out of the bad weather, but separate from the other cats in case she had any illnesses or worms or anything like that. We thought she looked in pretty good shape for having been outdoors, so we thought maybe she’d belonged to someone and got lost, but nobody answered the ad we placed in the paper, so she ended up staying. For a long time she did keep trying to sneak out of the house, but when she did, she’d always come back. Now she’s been with us for almost 13 years, and the only reason she tries to get out these days is to get into the front hall and eat the upstairs neighbor’s dried flower arrangements. She still doesn’t like to be picked up much, but she’s very snuggly at bedtime and occasionally sits in laps. And the fact that she seems to think she owns the house shows that she has become pretty well domesticated, even if she is still a Cat first and foremost.

12

Oh - and if you read the kitty eating habits thread, the guy on the right in that photo is Allessandro, who squeaks, coos, and occasionally washes his food.

13

Pepper, the mighty Bug Huntress and Queen of All Creation (featured in the above linked thread), was also a feral kitten. She had been taken in by a local vet, where I adpopted her. The vets and the assistants had made good progress in socializing her, but she was still a scared, shy kitten when I took her home. She hid for nearly three days straight, before cautiously beginning to explore. At a year old now, she’s grown into a wonderfully affectionate and enjoyable cat.

14

Quite a few years ago, I found a kitten on my doorstep. It was extremely young, and was obviously sick and weak. I took it in over the weekend, with the intention of taking it to the Humane Society on Monday.

It went into convulsions and died literally as I was handing the box it was in to the workers there at the HS.

Turns out it had rabies. :eek:

I had to get the shots and everything. Sigh.

15

Well, Peanut and I are making progress. We spent about an hour and a half hanging out last night (many more mosquito bites - somehow I can remember to buy the most expensive kitten food on the market, but not bug spray)

It was great. Peanut showed up as soon as I called, and totally pigged out. Then he walked away, but changed her mind and decided to hang out under the bush near me. We had some washing-up, and then we felt quite sleepy, since we had eaten so much.

Peanut actually fell asleep with me a few feet away. I crept closer and closer, Peanut kept one eye on me, and decided that I was within acceptable limits. I was crooning and saying silly things. Then I went for a grab and missed, and we had to start over. But we did, and felt pretty comfortable with one another again by the time I left.

We spent a little time together at breakfast this morning, but I had to leave and go earn kitten food. I tried a photo with my cell phone - I can tell where the kitten is, but I’m not sure anyone else would. I’ll keep trying.

16

Post it anyway, and we’ll have a rousing game of “Find the Kitty” while you’re gone. :smiley:

17

**UPDATE: ** After much hanging out, a million bazillion mosquito bites, and a few false starts, I’ve got her!

I tried tricking her a few times - tempt kitty into box, pick up box. Foolproof! No- foolish. Kitty can tell that somethings up and runs out of box faster than any human can move. She’s been happy to mosey in and out of the cardboard pet carrier that I got from the vet - it doesn’t frighten her a bit. When I put food in it, she happily went in there to eat the food. But whenever I tried to pick up the box with her in it - she was out of it before I was really sire I had done anything.

The thing that really worked was just the hours and hours we spent together. I’d goof up and scare her, she’d run away, but then I’d come back and hang out some more. So she’d come back and hang out. Pretty soon, she’d just run away from what bugged her but climb down to a different level of the old steps and keep hanging out. I talked with her and sang songs about what life could be like when you had soft blankets to knead on instead of concrete steps - and stuff like that.

Finally today (after the food in the box, pick up the box, kitty runs away fiasco), she came down to the lowest step and hung out at the far end (closest to me). She washed her face, kneaded the step for a while, thought about napping, then got down and walked over toward me. I don’t know why I thought it would work, but I just reached out and grabbed her around the middle and picked her up - no hissing, no scratching, no fighting. I put her in the box, took her upstairs to my apartment, and have locked her in the bathroom.

She has a tiny bit of food (allowed by the vet), water, places to hide, things that smell like me and things that don’t. I put flea drops on her right away, and a I did that she started purring. So I held her in my lap and petted her and she kneaded my knee, and we did that for a while, until she was done. I feel as though this is a cat who wants to be with a person, and wants to have a home and safety and to know that there will be food. And I’m so happy to give it to her.

Because everything is so overwhelmingly bad - there are so many people and places and things that need our time and attention and love and energy. Animals and people and friends and family and strangers and neighbors and acquaintances - and especially now with the devastation of Hurricane Me, you want to do both something and everything and that spins you, or at least me in circles. But here is a thing, a simple, defined thing, that I can do. And I’m doing it. And that feels good in the midst of the craziness.

18

Yep, you’ve got a kitty! Congrats! Sounds like you and she will get along wonderfully. :slight_smile:

19

More like kitty’s got a person, but congrats, nonetheless!

20

Shhh! We don’t want to alarm the human.