Feral Cats … or Discarded Treasures?

The Accidental TNR Colony

Some time ago, our neighborhood began to swarm with feral cats. At the time, my wife and I were providing rehabilitative sanctuary to as many cats as we could reasonably house and work with. As they showed up, we absorbed each new cat into our program until one morning I trapped a pregnant Mama … and I discovered that my normal spay and neuter resource was closed. I called another vet and he and an emergency inbound. I was stuck, I had to release an expecting cat. Moments later the vet called back and said that his emergency had gone elsewhere; he was just minutes too late. God simply must have wanted Thomas, Whisper and Zoe to live in this world. It was only a few days later that she gave birth to three kittens. We trapped Tomas and Zoe and that put us totally out of space. It was through that mechanism that we began the business of caring for a feral colony. As of this writing, we can touch Whisper and Daddy Cat (at feeding time) and again when they come to what is known as “the party”. That’s when we go out and take up their food each evening, hopefully before the Opossums and Raccoons arrive … we don’t always get ahead of our woodsy neighbors. The following gallery showcases our little colony. There are just three of them Mama, Daddy Cat and Whisper. They stay close to our house and with a little coaxing, in conjunction with “party time”, they have begun to hang out in the vicinity of the front porch. That’s where we want them. It keeps them safe from predators and we do have coyotes in our part of the country.

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Update: There is no substitute for staying in close contact with your colony, in fact, that is occasionally how you remove feral cats from an outdoor setting, moving them inside for more socialization. One useful mechanism is to spend time with them at least twice daily. In the case of these guys, my wife combined picking up their food (at dusk) with what we have come to call “the party”. After retrieving the food bowl, she sits on the front porch and offers treats to everyone. Recently, she noticed that Daddy Cat had a small abscess on his stomach. Because of “the party” we were able to simply reach down, pick him up and put him in a carrier. We made an immediate trip to the emergency vet and at present, Daddy is recovering nicely. He has been kept inside though, as his tummy was shaved and he was then much more susceptible to the tick menace that exists in our area during the summer.