{"id":6216,"date":"2013-04-27T00:12:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T05:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/polarbear60.org\/randr\/?p=6216"},"modified":"2016-12-12T19:17:14","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T01:17:14","slug":"cats-x-ing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/cats-x-ing\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats: X-ing Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sad part of being a feral cat is life, even with someone helping you out with food and water, is tough. The odds are stacked against you from the beginning.<\/p>\n

When I first began looking at what appeared to be a burgeoning feral cat situation in my neighborhood, I wanted to halt growth of the colony.\u00a0 I like a few cats in the neighborhood.\u00a0 They are a stabilizing influence.\u00a0 They might keep rodents down (although I’ve seen them going after bugs and lizards more than rodents, but who knows what they do in the cover of darkness).\u00a0 Too many cats, though, cause problems.<\/p>\n

San Antonio recognizes feral colonies and encourages people to catch and release, with a spay or neuter and health check up taking place between the catching and releasing part of the deal.\u00a0 That makes a lot of sense to me.<\/p>\n

I knew my neighbor lady behind me claimed one cat as hers — I’m not sure what that cat is, but I also knew it was an outdoor cat, and I didn’t think it was socialized.\u00a0 I figured she put out food and water and considered her duty done.\u00a0 So, in early October when I heard a crying (screaming was more like it) kitten out by my heat pump, I investigated.\u00a0 Sure enough, a little orange ball of fur was yelling his fool head off.\u00a0 Until he saw me.\u00a0 Then his eyes got wide, he froze for a second, then he turned and scampered under the house.\u00a0 We were prepared to leave on a two week vacation the next day, so there wasn’t anything I could really do.\u00a0 I did drag out the dog water tower, clean it up, and place it outside.\u00a0 At least the little critter could have water.\u00a0 I glanced across the street and saw a couple of larger cats and what looked like smaller kittens around them.\u00a0 I figured Mama had turned this one loose or he just hadn’t made the transition to another location yet.<\/p>\n

When we returned from vacation, I knew I didn’t want an explosion of cats in the neighborhood.\u00a0 We’d had that two years ago with a well-meaning neighbor who fed cats and somewhat tamed them but did nothing to get them spayed or neutered.\u00a0 They became a nuisance, and other neighbors enlisted animal control to trap them and remove them.\u00a0 We don’t have a sophisticated animal shelter in this town, so I imagine it’s mostly a kill shelter.<\/p>\n

My plans weren’t well-formed at this time, but I knew I needed to do something if possible to keep that situation from happening again.\u00a0 I began looking for the kitten of a couple of weeks ago.\u00a0 What I found were “big” cats.<\/p>\n

\"Cammy\"LittleThis cat was moving around the property.\u00a0 She was too skinny.\u00a0 She ran to preserve herself, but she clearly wasn’t feeling well.\u00a0 I last saw her on a drizzling afternoon of October 17. She was a gorgeous cat, but I think she perished.\u00a0 I was too new to figuring out what to do to help her, and I may have been too late anyway.\u00a0 I believe she was a litter mate to the next two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You’ve heard of Little Orange and Peaches.\u00a0 I’m certain they were brother and sister.\u00a0 I successfully trapped Little Orange and Peaches, got them spayed\/neutered and vaccinated, and released them in early November.\u00a0 I’ve seen Little Orange once since then, and that was in early January.\u00a0 Peaches was a regular at the feeder until mid-March.\u00a0 I haven’t seen him since then.\u00a0 I fear both these lovely kitties may have met bad ends, but I’d be delighted to see them.\u00a0 Mr. L thought he saw one of them five blocks away today, but when I showed him these pictures, he said they weren’t the same cats.\u00a0 Little Orange was the mama to my four ferals (Pretty Boy Floyd, Delta, Ruby Mae, and Rossie).<\/p>\n

I believe there was one more in the litter of older ferals, and that one is Sneaky (or, as I’ve been calling her lately, Sneakers).\u00a0 If you’ve been following along, you know she’s thwarted my efforts to trap her, but now that Peaches isn’t around, she’s lonely, so she’s been receptive to my attention — as long as I have a can of Fancy Feast in my hand.\u00a0 I have hope of capturing her and getting her spayed and vaccinated, but I’m under no illusions that she’ll live a long life.\u00a0 I hope to either keep her from having kittens or rescuing any kittens she does have in time to socialize and get them adopted.\"Sneaky\"<\/p>\n

This colony of ferals has a sweet disposition.\u00a0 I’m sorry to see them diminishing so fast.\u00a0 There’s always a remote chance they’ve found a home elsewhere and are living “happily ever after” as the saying goes.<\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sad part of being a feral cat is life, even with someone helping you out with food and water, is tough. The odds are stacked against you from the beginning. When I first began looking at what appeared to be a burgeoning feral cat situation in my neighborhood, I …<\/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":[28,117],"tags":[113],"class_list":["post-6216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-z-challenge","category-animals","tag-feral-cats"],"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\/6216","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=6216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}