{"id":6148,"date":"2013-03-30T13:14:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-30T18:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/polarbear60.org\/randr\/?p=6148"},"modified":"2016-02-11T15:11:43","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T21:11:43","slug":"cats-sneaky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/cats-sneaky\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats: Sneaky"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been an interesting week for us and Sneaky.\u00a0 I caught a glimpse of her Monday, and, with my limited glance, I thought she looked like she might be pregnant.\u00a0 I took Lady in to have her ear looked at and stumped the vet but came home with some Frontline spray to apply — she thinks it might be some kind of mite, but the skin scraping was inconclusive.\u00a0 The Frontline seems to be doing the job for Lady.\u00a0 I mentioned my suspected plight of Sneaky while I was there, and we all groaned.\u00a0 But what could we expect?\u00a0 She’s not spayed, and she’s about a year and a half old.\u00a0 It’d a be a miracle if she weren’t pregnant.\u00a0 As an aside, researchers are<\/em> working on contraceptives that can be given in food.\u00a0 They just aren’t there for cats yet.<\/p>\n

Monday night got very interesting.\u00a0 The inside cats were at the window chirping, and when I looked outside, Sneaky was prowling around the windows, rubbing on the door, putting her paws on the sill, and talking to the cats. I opened the side door and put my hand on the inside of the screen, and she didn’t run away.\u00a0 In fact, she batted at my hand and rubbed on the screen.\u00a0 Sneaky was either lonely or in heat.\u00a0 Tuesday was more of the same.\u00a0 I had the trap out, but she would take food out of the front but wouldn’t go inside. I had a carrier next to the trap in case she would go in there.<\/p>\n

Thursday, I sat out on the porch with her, and she rubbed against my hand (I did have a can of cat food out there I was luring her with).\u00a0 Then I made my first mistake.\u00a0 I tried to scruff her and put her in a carrier.\u00a0 That spooked her, because I didn’t get a good grip — not a lot of loose skin on her neck.\u00a0 Later that afternoon, I tried again to befriend her.\u00a0 I had her back in the area.\u00a0 She wouldn’t come near my hand, but when she eventually stuck herself two-thirds of the way into the carrier (I had a few dollops of food in there), I tried to close her in, but I failed to hold the carrier end, so when she resisted, the carrier went flying, and so did the cat.<\/p>\n

I’ve blown two opportunities to build trust with Sneaky, and she will never go into either the trap or the carrier now.\u00a0 That means I need to grovel for her forgiveness and do a lot more work to build trust with her, that I’ve shattered on two opportunities.\u00a0 Working with feral cats makes me feel like a pretty big screw up sometimes.<\/p>\n

Yesterday afternoon, I tried again.\u00a0 Sneaky stayed in the area when I went outside to sit on the porch.\u00a0 She ate the canned food I put out for her, but she could not be lured within five feet of me.\u00a0 The same is true today, and she’s staying even further from me.\u00a0 Yes, I screwed up, and she’s not ready to let me forget it.<\/p>\n

Something must have happened to Peaches, because I haven’t seen him since I before I came back to town on Sunday.\u00a0 Because of that, it seems Sneaky is a lonely kitty.\u00a0 She is definitely a she.\u00a0 My impression is she’s pregnant.<\/p>\n

The only way I’m going to catch her now is if I can build enough trust to be able to hold her for periods of time and long enough to be able to put her in a top loading carrier.\u00a0 I hope I can do that before she has her kittens, because if these kittens can be born in captivity, we’ll be able to find homes for them (not OUR home!), get Sneaky spayed, and either release her to outside or find a home for her (again, not OUR home!).\u00a0 Even I say eight cats is more than enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been an interesting week for us and Sneaky.\u00a0 I caught a glimpse of her Monday, and, with my limited glance, I thought she looked like she might be pregnant.\u00a0 I took Lady in to have her ear looked at and stumped the vet but came home with some …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117,77],"tags":[113,108],"class_list":["post-6148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-pets","tag-feral-cats","tag-sneaky"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}