I finally got to hold and pet my Maya-moo today as I sent her across the rainbow bridge. I think I felt every emotion as my 7 years with her ended. She never knew that humans were not scary but I hope in her final moments she knew how much I loved her.

My beautiful Maya…I asked Kitty to greet you. I know how much you loved her. I promise you no longer need to be scared of anything. Bye my gorgeous girl, I will miss you so much.

Sooooo.....in my earlier post, I showed the winterized cat condo that we had built for the kittens at my campsite.

I had mentioned that 1 of 4 kittens came home with me a couple of weeks ago. I also mentioned that since it was official closing day for us, I was going to try to get at least one of her siblings to come home.

Well............

We ended up getting all THREE of them. I have no idea how I went from never being a cat mom 2 weeks ago to suddenly having all 4 kittens in my house!

We brought them home and kept them separated from Camo (the one who came home a couple of weeks ago) so she could get used to their smell again.

Eventually we let her go over and sniff the crate. At first she seemed stand-offish. And I was worried! I thought maybe I made a mistake. She REALLY likes being the Queen of the Castle at home and has shown zero signs of missing her siblings.

Eventually we opened the crate and let them roam the main level.

Camo ran iver and booped each one on the nose with her nose. This is how they always greeted each other at my campsite.

My heart melted.

They have been roaming the main level but also hiding under the living room furniture (exactly as Camo had done when she first came home). Only this time, Camo stayed with them in the living room but sat on one of her blankets on the floor to wait for them to come out.

She showed them the food dishes. And showed them the litter box. And then sat "guard" while they hid again. 🥰

They came out to play with the fishing rod toy (like we did at camp) and are getting the lay of the land.

I am attaching photos of them all - Camo is the one wearing a pink collar.

The other photos are from camp over the summer (I havent been able to get many good pics of the rest of them at home yet because they are still hiding).

I wont be able to keep all 4 of them, but I will definitely be able to get good homes for 2.

Now it will be to figure out which one stays with Camo! She seemed to be bonded with one in particular before she came home so we will see if that hasn't changed.

They will have their vet appts this week for checkup and shots (once they settle in a little more). Our vet LOVED the story of Camo and told us that if/when we get any of the others, to just let them know and they will assign a vet tech this time (so it will be cheaper) and that if (by chance) we end up bringing more than one more home, they will also give us a "multi kitty discount" on checkups and shots which I thought was so kind of her 🥰

Signed

A New Crazy Cat Lady 🐈

Last night Volunteers were able to get one of the remaining cats safely. They did not step foot onto Home Depot property. They were able to trap one cat on the property of an adjacent business. They tried to trap a second remaining cat but were unsuccessful.

Feed us or your spray dies

Hello. First time posting, in need of advice. Was feeding a feral cat and she started bringing her 4 kittens with her August 10th, and we’ve been feeding them since while trying to make plans to TNR and possibly get the kittens socialized and adopted out. October 1st, 1 kitten got himself trapped in the garage and wouldn’t leave (it’s getting cold out but definitely scared). Caught 2 of the kittens last night and trying to catch the last one, mom avoids the crate with a string on the door.

We don’t have a proper set up for them, currently have the 3 caught loose in the garage. Have one large crate 48x31 in and a smaller one 25x20 in. Really unsure where to start and limited local support (contacted the only TNR, which we are out of the city limits for, whose only advice was to “TNR and if possible socialize them”).

We think they’re about 3 months now, and the large crate still seems too small for all 3/4. Were thinking to get a large catio to put in the garage (71 Lx32 Wx44 H in) but also unsure if that would be large enough etc and how to get them in there.

The kitten who wandered in on his own will warily eat with us at a distance in the garage, but the other two haven’t come around yet. As for the 4th one outside, hopefully once caught should we even let him outside of the small crate once in the garage?

We plan to get them to the vet and health checkup and neutered, but difficult when we can’t get close to them in such a large space. Can’t keep them either as we have cats inside already, but also feels too cruel to let them outside with the cold winter coming up.

Mom (and who we suspect is dad) are another problem but we don’t have the capacity to catch them yet, especially since they only come at night.

Is anyone apart of/aware of any Wisconsin based TNR groups/help/placement/socialization?

I camp at a seasonal campground and we are officially closing down for the winter months. There are a handful of us campers that have been looking out for the feral cats living at the campground.

We take turns doing the rounds and feeding them at specific campsites. A couple of people are in contact with rescue folks who have been trapping/neutering/releasing them back to the campground.

We have a few mama cats that seem to trust us enough to have their babies under our decks, etc.

We have managed to find homes for over 15 kittens this year!

I have never been a cat mom, but this year one kitten chose me. She came home with me a couple of weeks ago and OMG she is a DREAM!!! She now owns my house and I am merely her willing servant.

We have also been building some winterized cat condos around the campground for them. We used scrap wood from discard wood pile, foam boards for insulation that we covered in reflective insulation rolls. They have lots of straw and some self warming cat beds.

The kittens at my site seem to have moved in already.

We have set up a schedule between a bunch of us with a lady who lives her year round. We are all chipping in to deliver dry food and she has agreed to keep the feeders full. We have been stockpiling dry food in prep for today.

And today I will trying to trap at least 1 more kitten from my site to bring home to their sister.

Wish me luck everyone! (Also first time posting) 🥰

Hi everyone! I don’t know if you remember me posting a while ago about rescuing a mama cat and her four kittens. ❤️

The mama is Margot, and she still doesn’t come inside the house. She has been living in my backyard, but she never leaves the yard. And she has now found herself a best friend! So I officially have two girls living in my backyard who don’t leave the property, in addition to the other eight cats I feed outside.

The four kittens are doing really well. They have all been vaccinated and they are going to be spayed/neutered this week. The two gray kittens are still looking for their forever homes, while the two black kittens already have adopters — they’re just still with me for now.

I’m also going to have Margot spayed, and she has gained a little bit of weight, which makes me really happy because she was so thin when I first rescued her. I also need to spay Madalena, her best friend. These two girls have basically claimed my backyard as their home.

I’ve made a little safe space for them in my garage, with beds at different heights and places where they can climb and feel safe. There are also several beds around the yard, toys, food and water — basically everything I can provide to make the backyard a comfortable little cat paradise for them. ❤️

My plan is eventually to bring Margot and Madalena inside, but before I can do that, I need to get both of them tested for FIV/FeLV and spayed. I already have another rescued kitten, Pitico, going through the process of being introduced to my resident cat, Mia, and I still have the four kittens here as well, so it has been a lot to manage at once.

And unfortunately, today I ran out of cat food.

This has been really difficult financially. I’ve been trying to raise funds, but I’ve also been paying for a large part of everything myself — food, veterinary care, vaccines, medications, supplies, beds, etc. I made some mistakes with my own financial planning...

Thank you so much to everyone who has followed Margot, her babies, Madalena, and all the other cats throughout this journey. ❤️

My neighbor recently passed and her two 10-13yo indoor/outdoor cats have been turned out/abandoned. I've taken on feeding them from another neighbor (next of kin doesn't want the cats around/trying to get back into the house while they are selling it.)

I'm in SE Michigan and winters can get bad here. So I am shopping for shelters. I want to keep them comfortable as well as warm enough if it turns out I'm going to be their care taker.

I'm seeing powered heat pad units, staw for bedding and self heating mats. They are old ladies and I can't help but think about being cold and achy all winter, what is going to be the cozyest option for them? There are outdoor outlets near both locations the shelter might go, so power is ok but making a fire hazard is a concern.

I don't know how self heating mats work. Would it be paired with straw? On the straw? Under the straw?

Is there a chance a shelter might be willing to take the cats or are they too old to be eligible adoption candidates? They are very shy/skittish. I've seen the one once, and the other comes over reliabily for food and is chatty but won't come over to me. It's only been about a week. It seems like they are living under the deck next door.

Edit: I would like for them to find new homes and have been contacting local shelters. The outdoor shelter is for the mean time since it's already getting chilly at night.

Can anyone help me gender this cat? Has a vet appointment in two weeks but I’m curious in the meantime.

hopefully this is the right sub for this, if not please let me know where else i can post this!

i have a stray cat that lives in my backyard. i should say strays, as i believe she has kittens. i think mama herself is a kitten as she’s pretty small, i don’t think she’s more than a year old, if that. unfortunately i’m not able to adopt any of them because 1) i or any other people in my house haven’t been able to get close enough to them before they run away. and 2) the people who lived in my house previously had cats and didn’t clean up after them very well (i don’t know the full extent of it, just that our house reeked of cat pee when we moved in) so i think that if a cat were to live in my house it would mark its territory anywhere it smells pee that people don’t.

all that to say, i’d like to start feeding the strays outside while still letting them remain outside. i’ve never had cats so i’m not sure what food to get them that would be okay to leave outside under cover. i should also mention there are two dogs (red healers) that are in this house and don’t go in the backyard very much but do go back there sometimes, so i worry about them getting into the cat food.

any tips or advice of what i can do to help these cats as much as i can would be greatly appreciated 🙏

ETA: we cleaned as much of the urine as we could, but i’m assuming there may still be traces of it throughout the house.

Anyone in California have experience reporting possible unsafe rat poison use to the agricultural commission? Do they come out for just a suspicion, or would I need to try and find enough proof first?

For context in the last 2 weeks I’ve seen 2 dead feral cats in my apartment complex with no signs of injury, bleeding from the mouth and laying like they just went to sleep and didn’t wake up. First was a young kitten maybe 6 months maximum. Second looked about a year old, so different litters.

It could of course be due to disease or some other cause, but I’m worried it might be poison since it’s so sudden and it’s happened here before. The complex also recently switched pest control companies.

I’m in California, so any rat poison has to be used in a secure trap and can’t be anti-coagulant (to not harm wildlife). So I can report it to the agricultural commission.
I’m worried they won’t bother investigating though since it’s just a possibility, and could be due to a bunch of other reasons too. But I’m not really sure what to look for to try and rule it out or get more proof myself.

TL;DR: two feral cats died recently in my complex, and I’m worried about rat poison as a possible cause, so would like to report it just in case. Would the ag commission come out just to rule it out? Or do I need to have more proof? Any tips on what to look out for?

I have been TNR cats the past months, and kept 2 young kittens (3-4) months old. I kept one (M) and had him warmed up and cuddly in just a few weeks, he even plays with the dogs. I caught the second one (F) about a week and a half ago, but she feels almost impossible compared to the first one. I’ve done the exact same stuff but she just feels so closed off in comparison, hissing when I approach, cowering and crying when I leave. I’m just curious if there’s anything I can do to help her come out her shell better and be more comfortable. But when I hold her and lay down she falls fast asleep- no purring yet but I swear it’s the deepest sleep she gets when I cuddle her-

Environment: she’s in a large dog kennel (big enough for a litter box on one half and bedding/ food on the other side. The bedding side is usually covered to help her when we walk past. I have only gotten her to play with a flirt pole, nothing else interests her. And she gets licky sticks a couple times a day, during which I either pet her or hold her. Any tips would be so appreciated!!

(This is going to be a long post)

My cat "Mipha" has been missing for 7 days now.

He's been missing before btw. On july 11th, he jumped from our balcony at around 5 or 6 am in the morning while I was sleeping, and I did everything I could for 2 days, had no results.... well, around 12:00–12:30 am on july 14th, my other cat, "Zora" (who is mipha's brother), started meowing a lot. It almost felt like he was trying to tell me something. He led me to the balcony and started meowing even frantically. That's when I heard 2 faint meows, which sounded a lot like mipha..... long story short, I got him back.

He looked really tired, had a busted lip, and had some crumbs stuck to his mouth( poor guy tried to gnaw on/eat something hard). He came in and spent like 10 whole minutes just drinking water and just laid on the floor for VERY tired and didn't eat anything.

All this happened AFTER my high school exams when I was still home in the UAE

Here's what I did for those 2 days:

The moment I realized Mipha was not home, I went out and immediately started searching the under the balcony area and possible places he could've gone. I used to search like 7 times a day, and it would be of no avail. I put a blanket out that I had been using and HIS food bowl with food out under the balcony area, which might've helped him identify his way back or something.

...............My parents had left for a trip at around 5 pm on the 26th of September and had come back around 3 pm on the 27th of September....

Zora is home, but Mipha isn't... Im in India for college, and it has been SEVEN DAYS

My dad goes out 3 times a day and searches for him... It's been difficult. I've been a complete mess as I can't PHYSICALLY do anything ....... I feel like I should mentally prepare myself to forget him or something as it's the same news every day when I call my parents "we have not seen Mipha yet."

Mipha is a 1 year old white cat, and he is neutered.

There are a lot of stray cats here, my dad called me and told me he heard a couple of cats fighting outside while he was sleeping (around 6am) rushed out to see if Mipha is involved... he wasn't.

I genuinely dont know what to do, im so lost and devastated. Knowing he is out there, alone with no food and water, scared..... breaks my heart.

I read this one user had a cat who went misisng and was found in a cargoship in a neighbouring country, the cat might've jumped into a pick up truck or something.....

Thinking of all these possibilities terrifies me, I just want my baby back safe and healthy.

If you see this post please please please reply. Let me know if anything similar has happened to you or someone you know and if I should provide additional information.

It's still got wires around it so it's tight, I tried to put a bag over the top part of it that was open, I haven't had help to get a new bale of straw yet, it's gotten cold in Central Illinois at night, so I put out some of the straw in a cat box tonight, one of my fixed ferals got right in it I just saw, I've seen mixed things online about replacing straw every year, like I said it was bought late last winter, it's been kept in a garage that has had air flow but isn't necessarily temperature controlled, a lot of it is still in the plastic I believe except the top part and I tried to keep the top part covered the best I could. I've got cats that are itchy which I'm assuming is from fleas and allergies so I wasn't sure about the straw. They are pretty feral so I can't trap or get them to the vet unfortunately, they won't let me pet them either so I'm limited as to what I can do when they have or do show signs of health issues.

After my last post, I gathered the courage to make a vet appointment for Emby for yesterday morning. Following advice from this subreddit, I swapped out our cheap trap for a Fat Cat TruCatch trap borrowed from our local humane society. My husband and I took the day off work and I trapped her first thing in the morning. I had been dreading the vet appointment, and it was indeed unpleasant. I've worked with this vet office in the past to get ferals treatment, but they weren't super encouraging this time. We had to advocate to get her examined at all. My husband was about to give up and said let's just take her home and let her go, but I refused to have gone through all of that stress and put her through the trauma of being trapped for nothing. We were eventually able to convince the vet to sedate her, test her for FIV/FeLV, vaccinate her, and treat her for parasites. They asked us to leave her there for a couple of hours to get that done and made us sign a form saying she might not wake up. Overall not a fun time, but she pulled through the sedation just fine and her tests were negative! They also found her TNR tattoo, confirming that despite the worst ear tip ever she has been spayed.

We got her home and set her up in a spare bedroom because we decided the large, open basement might be overwhelming. She seems to be resting comfortably and has explored the room a little overnight. I haven't seen her eat or use the litter box yet, so those are the next hurdles.

Thank you to everyone who commented on my first post with advice and encouragement. We have a long road ahead of us towards full integration with the household, but I'm cautiously optimistic that Emby is going to turn into a happy house cat.

My title says month but I meant weeks. I’ve been trying to catch these 2 kittens since they were around 4 weeks. Their mom had several spots for them. The last place I saw her coming and going from was the woods in the backyard. There’s several piles of brush back there that could be homes. Sadly she got hit by a car and died on impact. I have no idea what she was doing in the road and I’m devastated because I thought I was going to be able to help them all. I need to know how the kittens will behave in response to her being gone. Will they hide for a while? Is there any chance they will make it back to the garage on their own? They were in there 5 days ago and I gave them food in there but I failed to catch them before she moved them.

I’ve been feeding my apartment feral cat colony for 4-6 months now. TNR events start in late October for me, I plan on catching as many as my apartment feral as I can! My favorite tom cat, Mr. Tom, he’s looking a little rougher than usual. He’s always been kind of beat up he looks pretty old, I just want to make sure this isn’t something super serious and is okay to wait a couple more weeks.

I’ve caught 2 young cats already and surrender them to the local barn cat program, and I’m currently fostering a spicy kitten I caught.

Any help is great! Also totally unrelated does anyone buy a decent quality dry cat food in bulk? I’m buying 28lb bags but I go through them quickly.

I adopted a 2 months old kitten I had her for 2 weeks now and she sleeps on a pillow next to me on my bed but she doesn’t like sleeping between my arms like my previous cat every time I take her between my arms and pet her she waits couple of minutes then move away

how can I make her use to sleep in my arms ?

(This is going to be a long post)

My cat "Mipha" has been missing for 7 days now.

He's been missing before btw. On july 11th, he jumped from our balcony at around 5 or 6 am in the morning while I was sleeping, and I did everything I could for 2 days, had no results.... well, around 12:00–12:30 am on july 14th, my other cat, "Zora" (who is mipha's brother), started meowing a lot. It almost felt like he was trying to tell me something. He led me to the balcony and started meowing even frantically. That's when I heard 2 faint meows, which sounded a lot like mipha..... long story short, I got him back.

He looked really tired, had a busted lip, and had some crumbs stuck to his mouth( poor guy tried to gnaw on/eat something hard). He came in and spent like 10 whole minutes just drinking water and just laid on the floor for VERY tired and didn't eat anything.

All this happened AFTER my high school exams when I was still home in the UAE

Here's what I did for those 2 days:

The moment I realized Mipha was not home, I went out and immediately started searching the under the balcony area and possible places he could've gone. I used to search like 7 times a day, and it would be of no avail. I put a blanket out that I had been using and HIS food bowl with food out under the balcony area, which might've helped him identify his way back or something.

...............My parents had left for a trip at around 5 pm on the 26th of September and had come back around 3 pm on the 27th of September....

Zora is home, but Mipha isn't... Im in India for college, and it has been SEVEN DAYS

My dad goes out 3 times a day and searches for him... It's been difficult. I've been a complete mess as I can't PHYSICALLY do anything ....... I feel like I should mentally prepare myself to forget him or something as it's the same news every day when I call my parents "we have not seen Mipha yet."

Mipha is a 1 year old white cat, and he is neutered.

There are a lot of stray cats here, my dad called me and told me he heard a couple of cats fighting outside while he was sleeping (around 6am) rushed out to see if Mipha is involved... he wasn't.

I genuinely dont know what to do, im so lost and devastated. Knowing he is out there, alone with no food and water, scared..... breaks my heart.

I read this one user had a cat who went misisng and was found in a cargoship in a neighbouring country, the cat might've jumped into a pick up truck or something.....

Thinking of all these possibilities terrifies me, I just want my baby back safe and healthy.

If you see this post please please please reply. Let me know if anything similar has happened to you or someone you know and if I should provide additional information.