Fables and fictions and wondering...

I've been keeping a close eye out to see if there might be a Pied Piper in our neighborhood?

Our feral kittens and cats are gone.

All of them.

You might remember when I wrote about the feral cats. 

Yeah.

Well.

They are all gone.

Mr. Jenny and I drove through the neighborhood this past weekend looking.

And not a one is to be seen.

Anywhere.

The cat food and water has been untouched for five days.

The ugly black birds that like to sit on the waterfall at the end of our pool are back.

I saw a spider on the sidewalk yesterday morning.

The cats are all gone.

And I don't think in a good way.

But our neighborhood is so urban that I wonder how they might have been trapped or removed otherwise.

I checked Craigslist.

There are no ads there for Pied Piper services.

Or ads requesting Pied Piper services.

My stomach feels kinda/sorta sick over this.

And, trust me.   Don't google feral cat elimination.

Remember how badly the Pied Piper story ended?

In the year 1284 after the birth of Christ
From Hameln were led away
One hundred thirty children, born at this place
Led away by a piper into a mountain. 

Yeah.

I need to cancel our appointment with the TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) people.

And I need to hope that wherever these poor cats went, they didn't have to suffer getting there.

Trapping Ferals takes coordination...

To read part one, just click here.

To read part two, just click here.

...and thank heavens it was a patient trapping coordinator that called me as we continued through learning about the TNR process.

The biggest information she gave me was that the kittens have to weight at least 2 pounds before they can be trapped.

Because of this she recommended we wait until after the first week  of August to get the cages.

If we catch the kittens and they are too small, the vet will not spay or neuter them.  Apparently, the cats become leary of the traps then so it becomes much more difficult to catch them the second time.

When it gets close to that time another person will contact me who will make an appointment to come to our home with the traps.   She will show us when and how to use them.

I'm very nervous about that whole part of the process.

We don't want to hurt them and we don't want to get attacked.

Once they are in the humane traps we then transport them to a participating  vet who will examine, spay or neuter each and then mark them.

We will pick them up from the vet and bring them home.

Because of the anesthesia they will not be able to regulate their body temperature for 24 hours and it is recommended we do not bring them inside.

Apparently we will place all the cages together, cover them with damp sheets and blow an electric fan across the cages to keep them cool.

Not only will our temperatures be in the high teens in early August we will also be in the middle of monsoon season, so this should be quite interesting.

As of this writing I believe there may only be two or three kittens left.

The smallest black one hasn't been around in a week or so but, again, it is really difficult to see them.   They are fast and shy and rarely come out at all into the side yard.

We have not been seeing the Mom much lately either although there were a bunch of bird feathers by and in the water dish when I went out to feed and water them this morning.

I won't have any more news on trapping the cats for about a month but after we get our instructions I'll let you know what's happening with them.

Our Grandlittles are quite fascinated with this process.   They are planning to help with the trapping which will be a good thing.

I learn as I get older how little I actually know.   There are so many things in the world that I am unaware of at all.   Feral cats is one of those categories. 

I believe that all knowledge is good knowledge.  I just hope this whole scenario ends well for the little wild cats.

Feral Facts

In dealing with the feral kitten issue by our house I've been trying to learn as much as possible.

If you'd like to read part one of this story before you read this, just click here.

I thought we had a random female cat that had given birth to a random group of kittens.

Not so.

Apparently our geographical area, like many, is covered by territorial type cat 'colonies'.

Many of the facts about feral cat 'colonies' surprised me.

First of all, I didn't even know such a thing existed.

We had originally noticed a black and white cat in our area but at the advice of the TNR (trap, neuter, return) volunteer we took a drive around our neighborhood just before full dark.

It was like an Easter Egg hunt.

"There's one!   There's one!"

Mr. Jenny and I were shocked to spot another black and white female with much larger kittens, four or five additional black and white cats and a black cat.

The coordinator told us that most like our cat colony would exist of 15 - 25 cats.

Each female could give birth to UP TO 15 kittens EACH YEAR!

Her first litter of kittens each year would be producing kittens before their first birthday, often as early as 6 months of age.

The number of new kittens each year in an uncontrolled colony was astonishing.

She went on to explain to me that a colony is stable at a specific number and that the death rate is quite high above that.

The more kittens born, the higher the death rate.

Food, water and shelter that supports 15 cats will not support 30 cats so the 'excess' will be plagued with illness, infections and more aggressive behaviour to find food and shelter.

Wow.

I never imagined that such a sub-culture of cats even existed, much less thrived in the bushes and trees and greenbelts surrounding our urban neighborhood.

I persisted in our conversation with the idea that perhaps we could catch them and socialize them.

She gently discouraged my idea.  Many of these cats and kittens are dozens of generations deep into no human contact.   They are socialized only to cats and it is difficult and nearly impossible to socialize them to humans.

She gently suggested that a more humane use of our time might be in indentifying and neutering other cats in our neighborhood.

TNR procedures can and are:

- Ending the breeding cycle and stabilizing the population
- More effective and less expensive than extermination
- Eliminates or minimizes annoying behaviors such as spraying, yowling, and fighting.
- Helps end the suffering of unwanted, homeless cats.
-Reduces euthanasia due to the number of kittens flooding the already overburdened shelters.

She then asked me if my husband and I would be interested in having a trapping volunteer call.

When I agreed she informed me that someone would contact me within 24 hours.

"What do I do in the meantime?" I asked.   "The vet's office told me to just give them water and that they might move on."

"They are not moving on," she told me.   "To a feral cat shelter is almost as important as food.  If the kittens are getting that big, she's not moving them now."

"What are they eating?   There's no restaurants here or open trash cans?"

"The next time you're in your yard look around.   Do you see any bugs or scorpions?   What about birds?  Spiders?  See if you still have a lot of lizards in the yard."

I told her I would look for sure.

Then she said, "You don't have to feed them, but the healthier they are the more they can resist infections and fleas.  You could put out just a small amount of dry kibble with the water to help keep them healthy.   Don't give them tuna or tablescraps or wet cat food, though, because that will make the trapping process harder."

Yikes.

Wayyyy too much information for a non-cat person like me to absorb.

I relayed everything to Mr. Jenny and then we both realized that we haven't seen any pidgeons or bugs in the grass lately.  It has been months since I've had to wash off the pool apron from nasty bird droppings.   There are no spider webs and we haven't seen a scorpion EVER at this house.

Apparently the mother is working hard to keep those babies fed.

This morning I took my cell and caught this quick shot of one of the black and whites.   It disappeared in a micro-second.

The cat kibble was almost gone this morning so I refreshed it and gave them new water.

And I waited for the trapping coordinator to give us a call.

TO BE CONTINUED

I've got some feral friends...

...although 'friends' might be too cozy of a word.

These little ferals are not friendly at all.

They flee so quickly at the sight of me that I actually wondered for a little while if I was seeing shadows.

I'm not.

We have kittens.

They have cozied up in the narrow little spot between our shed and the house.

There are two black and whites and two blacks.   There might be a fifth dark grey one but they are so very, very fast and so very, very skittish I only see them super early in the morning and super late at night when they seem to blend into the shadows.

If they see any movement from the window while we are peeking, they flee.

If we walk into the side yard, they flee.

When we started observing them more sneakily, we realized the mom is feeding them morning and night.

They are growing bigger and stronger right before our eyes and now venture farther up into the side yard.   They are quite curious about the dog door.

Oskie, the weiner dog, is no help, whatsoever.  He is old and can't see and rarely even barks at them.

Sigh.

Like I used to do in the 'old days',  I started calling around to see who might want a kitten.

Nobody.

Every single person told me that they were allergic, had some cats or were already over-run with feral cats.

After watching the kittens race away and lightening speed for another day, we realized that even if someone wanted them we would have no way to catch them.

Mr. Jenny and I were at a loss what to do.

We called our vet's office who told us that the cats would move on when they were ready.

The vet tech informed me the only way that all the feral cats and kittens would be able to find homes is if every single person in our county took in eight cats.

Because of this sobering fact, most shelters will not take kittens even for euthanasia.

Wow.

What an awful thought.

Euthanasia?

For kittens.

Prior to this, I realized on some level that animal over-population is a huge problem, but I've not encountered it up close and personal before.

I was really surprised by all this horrible information.

The vet tech continued with her advice. 

"You probably should NOT feed the cats but just put out a bowl of fresh water each morning," she told me calmly.

We took this advice and started putting out water that the same day.   It is moving into the triple-teens in temperature now and this seemed like a kind thing to do.

But it really, really felt like we should be doing more.

I can't stand the thought of anything being hungry or thirsty or scared.

Especially anything that's a baby.

But I also can't stand the thought of 5 or 6 cats living in my smallish suburban yard.

Mr. Jenny and I kept talking about this for a few more days

We continued to think about what to do...

...and then we noticed a little ad in the paper about feral kittens from the Arizona Animal Defense League.   They advocated a program called TNR.  Trap.  Neuter.   Release.

Neither of us had ever heard about this before.

We were never in a position to need to know anything about it.

I e-mailed the ADLA.

And they called me back the next day.

Wow.

I got a real education in feral cats.

The coordinator spent almost an hour on the phone with me answering my questions.

And then she helped us put a humane plan together to help our fuzzy little feral friends and to help our neighborhood.

THIS IS GETTING QUITE LONG SO IT WILL BE CONTINUED.

You can CLICK HERE for part two if you like.