Feral cat
 

I have mentioned here numerous times that the nice ladies on each side of us feed feral cats. I don't really like cats much but don't mind that they keep mice away from my cars.

Nearly a week ago a family memeber told me that they had seen a cat in my garage. I looked and looked but could not find one.

Yesterday and today I heard it mewing and looked again but it always kept quiet when I was in there. So finally not wanting it to die in there I kept thinking about it and finally brought our cockapoo Angel out and took her around the garage, urging her to find the kitty. Finally she spotted it sitting up under the bed on my Studebaker truck and growled...the cat growled in return....hmmm I did not want to try to catch it with my hands, so I brought down my live trap.

I baited it with dog food and a dish of water and went back an hour later to find a rather pretty black and white cat looking back at me.

I thought about calling my neighbors to see if it is one they are attached to but I felt if it was loose it would get in again....a pain. So I took it to the animal shelter.

A lady came out and got the kitty and took it away.

She came back and told me it had a clipped ear so it was a legally feral cat which had been spayed. I asked if that was even legal...she said yes. Then she said she was supposed to release it back to its herder but decided to keep it. I said "thanks" and went home.

It does not seem humane to release back to the wild-it's a issue for sure. Cats decimate birds in urban settings. I know they reduce rodents but there is danger of eating a poisoned rat.

Luckily I have never seen a rat at our house.

Funny you mention it. Rats broke into our garden shed and ransacked the fertilizer and stuff. I should have seen it coming. They made a hole in the window screen. I chased them out through the hole and shut the window(at night when I discovered what they were doing). I could see them out there trying to get back in. I will make a screen out of hardware cloth.

Feral cats are not trainable. They will not be domesticated. I have had a few ferals in my back yard, one of whom still survives. We have been feeding and housing her for about 10 yrs now. Her name is Trixy. I feed her twice a day, she sniffes my finger if I put it near her nose and that is it. I will sometimes run a finger down her butt if it is pointed to me and I get a hiss. She knows who I am because she waits for the food. She will not trust me.

We have had two ferals living in our house. Both were acquired as juveniles. The first one (Ernie) had some battle scars. We live trapped him, got him spayed and clipped (ear) and he lived with us for about 10 yrs or so. Came down with a lung infection and we had to put him down. In the 10 yrs, he never let us touch him. He live with our other cats and got along great but if I came close to him, he would bolt.

We now have a little guy named Cosmo. He snuck into the sun room when he was very young. Trapped him and had him spayed, clipped and chipped. He has been living with us for about 3 or 4 yrs now and I have pet him once when he was a kitten. Same as Ernie. If I look at Cosmo and we make eye contact .... he hisses and he is gone.

Letting a feral back into the wild is the only humane thing to do (there than getting them fixed and clipped) because they will never be a house cat. The wild is all they know. People let their cats out, dump them .. what ever and they breed. They are our fault. Cant blame a cat for being a cat.

I have to take issue with you on that from personal experience.


While my son was at college, some other folks trapped a feral cat and in mid-winter, stuck it inside a construction cone and left it there in below-zero weather, to get a cat-sicle for later.


My son went back to where it was about 12 hours later and found the cat almost dead. He took it home and it revived. It took my son maybe a year to get the cat to do anything domesticated but it liked having meals, heat and a litter box, so it obliged. After a second year, it got shots and was spayed.


That was 10 years ago.


The cat now lives with me, because my son's live-in girlfriend has a very aggressive pit bull pup which lives there and resists training. The cat, being very supple, escaped aggression by being fast and anticipatory, not to mention smaller, than the pit bull. However, once the pit bull cornered the cat and the cat pulled out the claws and seriously scratched the entire snout and eye areas of the pit bull, who retreated.


At that point I was asked to keep the cat " for a while." The cat has been with me for two years now, and is very friendly, but only to my son and me. She flees other people.



She is now about 13, as best as we can tell, and has leukemia.
She has shrunk down to 6.5 pounds, despite my best efforts to feed her well: boiled chicken, Whopper meat (she loves it), bacon, ham and all the other things that a cat would go after except no dead mice. She is restricted to the house because she is now a little frail and the raccoons in the area might gang up on her, they run in groups of two or three, and my neighbors would report me for shooting them (why I am moving to the country).


I can look in her eyes and almost see (imagined) understanding.


But she does respond to four different commands, including three English words.


I have no empirical data other than what I see, but you see a lot over 13 years.


She takes daily steroids, B-12 and a cancer drug keyed to inhibit formation of DNA in certain cells. This after I paid for a surgery to remove a benign tumor in her GI tract.


So take it for what it's worth, but I have found most mammals to be somewhat adaptive. Some ARE stupid, like goats, but many others like horses, surprise you at their intelligence.


Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Actually it's the cat's story. Her name is Wedge or Wedgie.

Feral Felines
 

When I was a young man I had several feral cats who after time decided to become my house cats .

We got along just fine as I rarely had company .

I have two porch cats. Mom and daughter. I feed them and they keep mice and armadillos away. They let me pet them.

Frau Putzer came as a package deal with the three "step cats." The fixed male had been feral when young. He was captured in a cat round-up in a shipyard. He absolutely hated me. When I'd come in the room, he'd hiss and leave. After a few weeks of this, I'd had enough. It was time to decide who's in charge of the Putzer household.

I wasn't gong to hurt Chili, but I was going to convince him that he didn't run the house. I grabbed him from behind so he couldn't scratch or bite me, got on my knees, and pinned him between my legs. Cats have acute hearing and sense of smell. So, he was going to hear me and smell me. I'd roar as loud as I could. Then, I'd blow my breath in his face. I did this a few times. Frau Putzer and the girl cats came running into the living room. They all three had the same look on their faces: "Oh ****, we've married a cat rapist."

After a few roars and breaths, I let Chili go and he ran off. I shook the treat bag and he came back. All the cats got treats and learned: "Auto's in charge around here, but that's not a bad thing."

I was in time out at work (federal civil service) for the first year of our marriage. But, eventually they had to give me some work to do after a special prosecutor got involved. I had a two week business trip after we'd been married about a year. When I got back home, Chili had decided that he was in charge... again. That didn't last long, though.

When Frau Putzer acts up, I grab her from behind so she can't scratch or bite me. I roar and then I blow my breath in her face. She says "Meow, meow!" I let her go and then give her a few miniature Heath Bars. Yep, "Auto's in charge around here, but that's not a bad thing."

The cats eat out of some small dishes Frau Putzer found at a garage sale. They look like something that would have been used on airliners back in the day, but with no airline logos on them. (We have some Eastern Airlines dishes that have logos and actually might be worth a few bucks.) When I get a new bag of candy, I bring Frau Putzer one or two on a cat dish.

Chili lived about 18 years. As he got old and feeble, he became my buddy.

I run off cats,I have 7 chipmunk families here

I am sure there are exceptions to the rule. It is also possible some of the cats may have been domestic before they were outside. Over the past 20 yrs or so I have taken care of perhaps 15 (two of which ended up indoors) or so ferals and with out exception, none of them would be domesticated.

The climate of Floriduh is warm enough for cats to survive winters here. There's also an unlimited supply of lizards for them Our feral cat population was wiped out by coyotes. The city got rid of the coyotes and the cats came back.

We grabbed two of your current three cats off the street. One was obviously somebody's pet as a kitten, and real appreciative of being abducted. She was hanging around the back of a coffee shop as a juvenile. The other one took a while to appreciate us and the other cats. We thought she was a kitten because of her size. But, the vet said she was about eight years old when we grabbed her. What she lacks in size she made up for in (bad) attitude. The third one belonged to an old lady going into a nursing home.

The two stays both had their ears clipped when we got them. Frau Putzer had a fixed male caught during a roundup at a shipyard. He was difficult most of his life, but came to appreciate us more as he got old a feeble. He'd steal shiny stuff and hide it, though.

I also feed feral cats.

The area I feed has scabies so we also trap, neuter, and relocate to a farm in another area.
One cat we caught had kidney disease so I took him home.
He became friends with my cat and with daily handling reverted back to being a totally tame and friendly house cat.
Bear was very affectionate, loved being brushed and cuddled with my other cat. He enjoyed sitting on the couch next to me.

I have caught several other feral cats which totally reverted back to being people friendly.
Not all are trainable.

It takes time and patience and daily handling.

I used to work for a carpet cleaning company. the nastiest homes we dealt with were homes that had cat(s). The cats liked to go behind sofas/couches and mark their territory. A neighbor told me about a home she bought that had had cats. The previous owner was a cat owner. Their cats had urinated so much she had to tear all the carpets out and on the second floor of the house remove and replace the plywood sub floor. She said the entire ordeal was EXPENSIVE.

One thing for sure, I would never purchase a cat owner's house and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.....

The ancient egyptians worshiped cats. They mummified them after death and buried them with their pharoahs. Over the years, I've known a few cat owners and without question, they were some of the weirdest strangest people I've ever met or known. The kind of people who would vote for a child pervert like Joe Biden (see my other threads concerning Creepy Uncle Joe).


Genuine whackos......:D:eek::D