Continuation of the Saga of the Kittens!

Thought I'd update you on my kitten fiasco.  As I have said before, the two little black kittens that I adopted and feed are grown now.  They are brother and sister and I named them K.T. (boy) and Ditto (girl).  They live quite happily on my porch because they started out feral and are just learning over time to trust me.  I feed them daily and K.T. goes walking with me and the dogs in the mornings.

I was able to trap K.T. and so he got carted to the hospital and neutered.  Got him a complete physical and all his shots, too.  Since then, he has become quite loveable and allows me to pet him and even pick him up sometimes.  He has also begun following the dogs in the front door when we come in from our walks.  He doesn't want to stay inside, though, and begins to howl if I don't let him out right away.

Ditto got pregnant before I could trap her.  She had a litter of two little ones.  The children in this apartment complex caught the smallest and I guess they dropped it because it's front leg was broken.  So I took both to the vet and had the little one put to sleep while getting the other one shots.  This baby was inside my house from about 5 weeks of age to 3months of age, but she never got friendly or trusting and she bit and hissed and scratched if you got anywhere near her.  I finally had to catch her and take her to the animal shelter because she was biting me all the time.  I am sorry that I had to do that, but I really didn't know what else to do. 

Anyway, all this time I never could catch Ditto and she got pregnant again!  I was so upset.  This time, she had her babies close by and when I put a box outside the door, she brought them to live in the box.  Three little kittens now living in a box in my doorway.  When the kittens were about 4 weeks old, someone took them.  They were there in the morning and gone in the afternoon.  Ditto was frantic!  They finally were returned after a couple of days and they were thin and frightened.  I brought them in the house for safety and Ditto came inside to care for them.  She is very skittish and frightened, but she was so happy to see her babies again that she forgot to be afraid. 

Once the kittens were eating on their own and getting more independent, I finally got to take Ditto to be spayed.  No more kittens for us!  I found good homes for all three of these delightful babies who were well socialized from being in the house.

I was so happy to think that my cat issues were now over.  Or so I thought!  About the time I got the last kitten placed, I noticed another feral black cat hanging around.  She looked like she was nursing and she came to see if my two left any food.  The next day, I went out to feed my cats and guess what I found!

Four kittens were waiting to be fed.  No mother cat in sight.  Great. 

These are truly feral kittens, but they were starving and they fought my cats off the food.  Now, if I want my cats to be able to eat, I have to feed the kittens too.  I am not thrilled.  I really don't want to be the cat lady on the block.  So, my plan is to take the TNR class at the Humane Society so I can trap these four kittens and to release them away from my home after they are fixed.    I'll let you know how that goes.

It really is a shame that people in apartments just leave their pet cats when they move.  I have always seen colonies of feral cats at every apartment complex I have ever lived in.  Seems a shame. 

Related articles

• Dora The Explorer Kitten ~ The Feral Cat Rescue Project (feral-kitten-rescue.blogspot.com)
• Behavior of a Feral Cat (brighthub.com)
• Think Globally, Spay Locally (animals.change.org)

This is about cats...not Satchmo

Image by shannonpatrick17 via Flickr

I know this blog is about my dog, Satchmo, but I just have to talk a minute about cats.  I live in an apartment complex in Austin, TX.  As you may know, apartments are a veritable source of feral cats from people moving away and leaving pet cats, the industrial dumpsters filled with trash attract strays, etc.  So, there used to be a black female cat that "sort of" lived down the row from my house--(I say sort of because the elderly lady living there did not own the cat, she just felt sorry for her and fed her fairly often).  Anyway, this cat has had several litters of kittens in the two years I have been here.  The problem is that they are feral and yet they live up close to people.  What usually happens is the kittens either get run over in the parking lot, get eaten by wild animals (I've seen foxes, skunks, and snakes), or they go all wild and run off. 

Anyway, before this lady moved, there was a litter of 4 little black kittens living inside her car (which was never used because she was house-bound).  One was run over, another was killed because he was up inside a motor well when the owner started the car--but two remained.  My Satchmo has always loved cats and so he wants to go check on the kittens whenever we go outside, so I guess I was sort of familiar to these little babies.  So, when she moved, I began feeding them on my porch. 

It did not take even a day for them to find my food and start sleeping on the chairs outside.  So, recently, they have become quite curious about where Satchmo and I go when we go inside.  I frequently find them sitting just outside the door when I open it.  So, last night I put the dogs up in my bedroom and left the front door open for a long time.  These two little black fuzz balls cautiously came up to the door and then-----they came inside.  They were very frightened and bolted if you moved, but they stayed in the front area sniffing and looking for quite some time.

My goal with these two is to be able to capture them and take them to be sterilized and get shots before returning them to their current life as outside cats (unless they want to come inside again).  We'll see.  I don't know if this is possible, but I will keep trying.

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