Cat flaps are fine, but at the time I wanted the cats to get used to being inside the house, not outside
Orville_mogul:
You think that shutting the door was horrific, you should see what we did to the cats after that. Bwuhahaha! :eek:
But seriously, we did want to get all of them, but they kept coming in and out. In the end we just kept in the ones that we could. In hindsight, it did worry us that the others were still out there, which is one of the reasons we decided to let them go.
I honestly don’t know whether the whole thing was foolish, ill-advised, etc. Yes, we wanted kittens for the kids, and we did feel that they might have a better life with us than in the wild. But perhaps that is a wrong assumption?
My perfect plan would have been to catch all 5 of them. Get the mom fixed immediately, get all of them checked out by a vet and vaccinated, release the mother and keep two kittens for ourselves and give two to another family.
But for someone who is relatively new at this, it proved to be a lot more difficult, in particular the likely logistics of getting all 5 into cages to bring them to the vet. And we had called around to several shelters and cat organisations, and none of them were at all interested in ferals. All we got was the offer to lend us a trap. I am pretty disappointed with the lack of support to be honest.
Anyway, I am happy to say that the family is reunited. We let the cats out yesterday, and I saw all 5 of them together by the hedge this morning. So there’s that at least. I guess we will continue to feed them, and may try to make up a sheltered place for them in our garden shed for the winter. They actually seem to want to reenter the house, so we are having to be careful to keep them outside. I haven’t ruled out trying to catch the mother at some point in the future to get her fixed. Let’s see.
I am very glad you ultimately decided to do what is IMHO the best for this cat family. I am sorry that your little ones may be feeling disappointed. Perhaps you can still befriend the cats by feeding them but do not do things like trying to pick them up while they are eating etc.
Perhaps sitting down near their hang out and playing with a cat-appropriate ball or toy, without paying attention to the cats might pique their interest. You may have to do this more than once. Cats like to approach people on their own terms and spend a lot of time checking you out and evaluating you. No sudden moves or loud voices.
Good luck!