Feral Cats—Help!
I’m looking for someone to help me catch a feral cat family that lives in my backyard. It’s two adults and 5 kittens. I’m am VERY allergic and suffer from asthma, not to mention I don’t have the time really to do it. I am willing to pay someone who has the motivation and /…
I’m looking for someone to help me catch a feral cat family that lives in my backyard. It’s two adults and 5 kittens. I’m am VERY allergic and suffer from asthma, not to mention I don’t have the time really to do it. I am willing to pay someone who has the motivation and / or experience. I will cover any expenses as well. If you have a referral or interest in doing this, please leave contact info. They are all tabby cats.
It really is NOT a myth that cats hold their territory. I think it depends on the cat (s) but I have one core feral in the backyard that the neighbors had TNR’d well over a year ago. He allows one other TNR cat in the yard that was part of the neighbor’s original trapping effort and that’s it. This is down from numerous cats in the yard and kittens born under our shed 1-2x per year. He really does chase the others out. Seen him do it many times and he’s quite aggressive about it. We’ve also received numerous dead mouse ‘presents’ on the stoop so I know he’s hard at work. He’s friendly enough to put flea stuff on him and he likes our dogs, so I can honestly recommend the whole TNR thing.
Thanks for the comments and advice. I will post an update when/if this resolves!
I would like to have them returned, neutered, to the yard.
Good.
I did TNR Spring 08 after feeding 3 generations over the past 5 years. You have to nip this in the bud. I didn’t, got too attached and saw the ravages that ferals suffer.
I’m still feeding 4-5 core cats with drop-ins. It’s a myth that the neutered chase away the non-neutered. They have no balls.
I took the TNR course and Have the same problem- being able to catch the cats. Its difficult for me to get the cages- no car. But we sure don’t have a rat or mouse problem. the other thing is that if you remove a feral cat colony, more ferals will move in- colonies are territorial, and tehy move around if a colony leaves. I’d laso be interested in knowing if ther is someone who can help me do this- the cats are gorgeous but I can’t take in anymore and I hate seeing the kittens suffer.
Hoffster – thanks so much for posting this. I too have a colony in my backyard fed by neighbors that I’ve been trying to deal with. Having done the research, taken the TNR class, and spoken to the ASPCA, it just comes down to not having the time to coordinate this effort.
If you have any good experiences with advice from your post, would you mind posting it? I would be happy to assist in this effort, but really need someone to do all the coordination/legwork for me (for pay, of course!).
Hoffster- Myself and our neighbors across the street from me (so in effect two ‘rows’ of houses )have been doing TNR with the strays around here. It really does work. They stop spraying, they keep other ferrals from coming in and laying claim to the area (we’ve actually watched them chase off interlopers). They catch any mice and larger bugs. It’s actually nice to have them around once they’re fixed.
Thanks for caring enough to do the right thing since you see how easy it is for people to make jokes and be cruel to these poor homeless cats that are just trying to survive.
The main thing is you’re going to have to ask the neighbors to not feed them for 12 hrs prior to putting the cages down so they have incentive to go in to get the food (a can of tuna or wet food works best).
Good luck!
Speaking of rats — can’t we deposit such families of feral cats in those areas where rats are a huge problem (on my block for instance)?
Better than a colony of feral rats…
Rent a lion. It’s a win-win.