Tag Archives: Feral

The Friendly Feral

My mother-in-law, Elaine, has been feeding several feral cats in her neighborhood for several years now. Currently she has about four, perhaps more, that hang out near her home. Sometimes we go there to visit and there is a cat, sometimes two, hanging out under her carport. She has even been able to coax a couple of these ferals to come inside at least part-time. Her current cat, Pumpkin, is not too keen on an outside cat coming in and sleeping on the bed, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

We went to visit recently and saw a gold cat she named Benny and I was amazed at how friendly this cat was for a feral. It’s possible he was a pet at one time but that would be unusual since the pattern seems to be feral cats in that area. Thankfully, Elaine has done a good job getting the cats that hang around her house fixed.

When we arrived Benny was outside and I called him over to me and he came willingly. He loved being pet and rolled around in the grass while he talked to me. It was a very cool experience to see a feral cat so happy to get a little attention. I recorded it for your viewing pleasure. Please forgive the bad framing. I could not see the screen while I was recording and guessed a bit high.

Benny does have a bit of a skin condition on his nose but Elaine is treating it with an ointment.

So what do you think of Benny?

Seven Days of Ferals

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Lately, I have been taking pictures of the feral cats at work almost every morning when I feed them. Of course, this isn’t everyday because I work four days a week, sometimes five. Also, there are not always cats around when I put food out, but I wanted to share with you some of the pictures I have taken recently.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016 – These two usually hang out together but not always.

Thursday, March 3 – I often see this one waiting under the palm tree when I arrive at work.

Monday, March 7 – The cat to the far left of the picture below is the shyest of the three and is difficult to photograph because he is usually, but not always, too far away.

This one is the easiest to photograph.

Tuesday, March 8 – There seems to be a territorial dispute here even though I put down two piles of food.

Wednesday, March 9 – Everyone was around for their picture that day. I especially like the photo of the gold cat.

Thursday, March 10 – The bulls-eye tabby sometimes is waiting along the fence about 100 feet away when I arrive while the gold cat is waiting closer. After I go inside to get their food, she moves in closer.

I think he was talking to me here, telling me to hurry up.

Friday, March 11 – I put food down and then stayed where I was and called this cat to come to me. I could tell part of him wanted to but he wasn’t quite ready for that so I backed away.

Well, that is how my morning at work starts. What do you think?

Ferals at Work Update

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I am still putting food out for the ferals that hang around my place of employment but for a stretch of a couple of weeks I saw them very rarely. The food was always gone when I checked later in the day so I assumed they were just showing up later than usual. That surprised me because there is a school behind my work and activity increases exponentially after I get there.

One day I saw several birds interested in the food.

I worried that maybe the birds were eating it but I never saw the birds after that so I think that wasn’t normal.

Fortunately, I started seeing more of the feral cats again about two weeks ago. Some days I see only one and not always the same one but other days I see all three like this morning and when I took this video.

This fellow usually shows up independent of the other cats. Not sure if he is in the same colony or an outsider.

Today was a good day because the ginger and white cat was waiting for me when I got there this morning and the bullseye tabby showed up as soon as I brought the food out. Normally she (or he) is pretty shy but I think she is getting used to me.

There is one more cat, a white and black cat that I have not seen for a long time. I hope that one is okay.

Maybe Some Cats Shouldn’t be “Rescued”

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If you have ever looked for a cat to adopt on Petfinder or the website of your local shelter, you may have noticed that a fair amount of them have been ear-tipped. If you don’t know what that is, when a stray or feral cat is captured and fixed, the vet will remove the tip of one ear or put a notch in one ear to show that the cat has already been fixed.

Ear “tipping” or “notching” is usually done for the Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) programs but sometimes a well-meaning person will trap a cat that is friendly to humans and not release it but put it up for adoption. I believe that is what happened to Frankie, although we know nothing about his history. We do know he has a notch in his ear indicating he was probably captured as a feral, perhaps at a young age.

We know the history of Puck, who was a bottle-fed kitten. Puck will go outside if given the opportunity but he gets nervous easy and then wants to go back inside.

I found Chris in the shelter when he was around five months old. I know he came from another shelter but I don’t know his history before that. I do know Chris loves going outside but he also stays close to home.

Frankie is not like either one of them. He is constantly crying at the door to go out and, while he is not as good about slipping out the door as Chris is, he will get past me sometimes. When that happens, he immediately starts exploring the neighborhood. If I get close enough to catch him, he runs or he finds a car to hide under.

When I put a harness on Frankie and walk him, he tends to travel in one direction. I know most cats have a territory that is smaller than the area that Frankie takes me through. I usually have to coax him to travel in a direction toward home instead of away. The last few outings I stayed out with him a long time to see if he would eventually make his way back home. He didn’t.

I can’t help but wonder if he would ever want to come home if he escaped and I lost track of him. He might also travel too far and get lost. Frankie has too much of a wild cat in him and I wonder if he wouldn’t have been happier if he was allowed to stay outside in a TNR colony.

Something happened Tuesday night that showed just how wild Frankie still is. We ordered take-out from a nearby Italian restaurant. When the driver arrived, I shut the slider between the house and Florida room, locking the cats in the house and allowing me to open the door without worrying about Frankie or Chris running out.

Unknown to me, Frankie was in the Florida room with me and ran outside when I opened the door. It was dark outside and I had no shoes on. Our grass is loaded with little stickers called sand spurs. They are painful to step on so I quickly paid the delivery driver and ran inside to get my shoes. When I got out, the driver had followed Frankie behind the house to our left and managed to herd him back toward me. Frankie ran right up to our door and I thought the driver scared him enough to want to go back inside but that was not the case.

He continued around to the other side of our house and ran under Rose’s car. The two of us looked for him under the car but it was too dark so I pulled my little key-chain flashlight out of my pocket and looked under our vehicles. He was not there. That is when the driver noticed him near the front door of the house to our right.

I looked over in that direction and saw him standing there with something hanging from his mouth. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what I was seeing and then said, “Oh my God! He has a rabbit!”

I tried to grab Frankie and get him to release his catch but he eluded me and ended up back under Rose’s car. The two of us worked at him from opposite sides of the car, at which point he let go of the bunny and crawled out from under the car. That was when I grabbed Frankie and picked him up while the driver grabbed the rabbit and checked out his injuries.

He seemed uninjured except for a small gash on the back of his neck but he was having trouble breathing. The driver tried to stroke his neck to stimulate breathing but it was soon too late for the rabbit.

After that incident, on Friday, Rose decided to take Frankie for a walk. I hurt my back Thanksgiving morning and was not up to the task so Rose decided that Frankie needed to get out more. She was out with him for a long time and when she returned she said “Never again!” Frankie managed to force his way out of the harness and led her on a chase around the neighborhood.

Those incidents made me wonder whether Frankie’s cushy lifestyle in our home is really what’s best for him. Don’t worry. I’m not going to release Frankie into the wild. In fact, I am watching him now lying upside-down on a soft blanket on the sofa.

He seems to enjoy the good life as much as the wild life but I can’t help wonder how many other cats have been “rescued” that may have been better off left alone. I also wonder how many cats were never adopted because a “wild” cat was adopted in their place. What do you think? Is it wrong to leave a feral outside even if it is friendly towards humans?

Three Feral Cats Now Wait For Breakfast

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For over a month now a tabby cat that I have called “My Little Buddy” has been waiting for me almost every morning when I get to work. I don’t feel that name fits that cat anymore because I get the feeling that she is female. I’m not sure why I think that, perhaps it is because she reminds me of my cat Abbey, shy but not fearful. I feel like I need to name them all but without knowing their sex, it is difficult.

Until a few weeks ago, three cats would come around to eat but only the one tabby would be there waiting for me. A fourth cat joined the group a few weeks ago (See There’s a New Feral in Town) and about two weeks ago the white and gold (ginger) cat joined the regular breakfast crew.

Do you see the second cat in the grass?

Sometimes now the gold cat is close and the tabby is in the distance and doesn’t come closer until I put the food out. I am not sure what the dynamics of their relationship is yet. I do know that the gold cat is the least fearful of humans, or at least me, and lets me get pretty close before backing away. Feral cat

A week ago the new Tabby was there waiting for breakfast when I got to work and I have seen him once or twice more while I was putting food out.

The pictures above are screen shots from a video that was too shaky to show here. I noticed the other three cats are ear-tipped but I did not see it on this one until I looked at the video. I did manage to put together another video that is not too shaky, although it could be better.

Feral Waits for Me

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When I first started feeding the feral cats at work, I never saw them, I just saw they ate the food. There are three cats that I know of but one in particular shows up regularly after I get to work.

I always look for him when I get there but usually I don’t see him until I go inside, put my lunch in the fridge and then come back out with a handful of food. That is when I see his head poking out from a mound of grass or somewhere else not too far away but far enough to be safe.

Lately he has been getting bolder and I have seen him waiting behind our dumpster, which is a lot closer than usual. So far I have seen him that close twice and just a little farther a couple of more times. I can’t help but wonder if he was there waiting when I pulled into the parking lot and I just didn’t see him or did he move in that close during the three minutes it took to go inside and come out again.

September 2

September 23

Wherever he is, he waits for me to go back inside and shut the door. I usually leave it open a crack and watch him walk toward the food as soon as the door is shut. The front door is a fair distance away and it is not in a sight-line to the food but he still waits until I am inside and the door closes.

Thursday the ginger and white cat was there instead of my usual little buddy, but he stayed a bit farther away. It is possible the ginger intimidates the other one but I don’t know that for sure. The funny thing is, he waits for me to go inside and shut the door just like the other one.

This picture is from August. I didn’t have my camera Thursday.

I hope these kitties won’t be upset with me when I return from vacation.

Weekend Update

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I just wanted to catch you up on some of the stories I wrote about recently.

The feral cat I have been feeding at work is doing okay (see Feral Cats at Work and Feral Cat Update). I worried because he didn’t show up on Tuesday and the food went uneaten all day. I had Wednesday off and Thursday the cat was back like nothing happened. This time he left a fair amount of food behind. That tells me there is a good chance that he is either a good hunter or someone is feeding him elsewhere too. Of course, he may have also been scared off before he finished but I doubt it. In that situation, he would have backed off and waited for the person to leave but there were no people in sight when I came outside, nor was the cat anywhere in sight.

Chris has pooped on our new sofa twice more since I first mentioned it (See A New Level of Badness). I stopped using the Dr. Elsey’s Litter Attractant a couple of years ago when Chris’s pooping problem stopped but I bought some again in hopes that he would leave the sofa alone. I bought it at Petco for $20 and then noticed it was on Amazon for $7.63. It has worked for me in the past but this time It made no difference.

Chris is very finicky about his litter boxes and when we brought the sofa in we changed things around a little. Perhaps the space between the sofa and litter boxes was too small. It was plenty big enough for a cat to get through but who knows what goes through his mind.

I decided to pull out the boxes a bit so that they were more easily accessible. It is better now but one box is still too close to the couch. So far, so good but we will see what happens.

The kitten we helped rescue ( see Newborn Kitten Rescue and Kitten Update) had been doing well until recently. Rose wanted to name the cat Luis, after her maintenance supervisor who started the rescue process, but the cat turned out to be female so now she is named Lulu. Felice has worked hard to keep Lulu healthy but she has recently developed diarrhea, which can be very bad in young kittens. Bottle feeding a kitten is not a good replacement for mother’s milk and we can only hope she will get better. I have every confidence in Felice’s ability so I am not too concerned. Unfortunately, I have no new pictures of the kitten to share but here is one from July 4th in case you missed it.

Feral Cat Update

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Since my last post on the subject, I have seen the feral cat that has been eating the food I put out at work two or three more times. It is strange that I put food out for a month or more without seeing who was eating it, but now I see him almost every day I am at work. I call it “him” because it sounds better than “it” but I don’t know the sex of the cat. I know there have been other cats in the area. One even looks like a skinny Chris, but they have either moved on or are much shyer than my new friend.

The last time I pulled into the driveway at work, he was nearby. It almost seemed like he was waiting for me. I quickly went inside for the cat food, put a handful in the usual place, backed away to a safe distance, set my camera to “video” mode and waited for him to move to the food, but he didn’t move. He stood there waiting for me to leave. It was just as well. The camera lens had fogged up due to leaving the air condition truck to the warm, humid Florida outdoors.

I walked inside my work and wiped the fog off the camera lens. I then looked out the door to see he was no longer in sight. I walked outside and quietly walked to the edge of the building while zooming out the telephoto lens. I peeked around the corner and saw him eating the food I put out. I then pointed the camera in his direction and got off a couple of shots. I even made a noise so he would turn around and look. People driving by must have thought I was some weird voyeur or something.

I can’t wait to see if he is waiting for me on Monday. Maybe I should bring him a treat like sardines or something. What do you think?

Feral Cats at Work

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We have feral cats that hang out behind where I work. I don’t see them very often and when I do it is from a distance. There is a large fenced in area that has been abandoned for about a year now, although the cats have been there much longer. Because seeing the cats is rare, I thought there was no colony of cats, just a few loners who’s territories intersect near my work. If there was a colony, I thought, my work is at the outside of their territory.

About a month ago I saw a cat walking the perimeter of the fence behind my work and I thought maybe the cat has a routine. As an experiment, I brought some food to work and put a handful near the fence, on a plastic Verizon cover. By the end of the day the food was gone so I decided to continue to put food out.

I don’t want to feel responsible for these cats because I only work four days a week, but I thought a handful of food three times a week would be more like a treat for them. I have been doing that for a month now, never seeing the cat, or cats, that have been eating it.

Yesterday morning, to my surprise, I went out with the food and surprised a beautiful feral cat that was walking across our parking lot. I don’t remember if it was the same cat I saw last month, but it could be. It immediately ran to the tall grass to take cover. I said some friendly words to it and then set down the food and went back inside, but I peeked out the door and watched the cat walk toward the food. I then quietly walked back outside and saw the cat eating the food I put out.

Later I went out again to empty the trash and saw the cat not far from the dumpster, watching me. He made no attempt to run away as a dumped the trash inside. I went back inside and about ten minutes later I decided to bring out another handful of food. My hope was that the cat would see me as a friend, but when I got outside, a man on a riding lawn mower was outside and, of course, the cat was gone.

As I edited these pictures, I noticed the cat had its ear tipped, which means he is probably part of a TNR program. If that is the case, perhaps there is a colony nearby and perhaps someone is looking after them. I hope so.

Feral Cat Ear Notching

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We know nothing about Frankie’s back story. We adopted him at Petsmart from The Pinellas County Animal Services. The person at Petsmart did not know anything about him so we just didn’t think much about it, although I did send a Facebook message to the animal services with his reference number but, even though they have an active Facebook page, I got no response.

I couldn’t help being perplexed, though, by the ear notch on his right ear. I have heard about ear notching before. It is the method of cutting a notch in a cat’s ear after spaying or Neutering. Sometimes it is called ear tipping when they remove about a centimeter off the tip of the ear.

Ear tipped cat

Ear notching or tipping is mostly done to feral cats involved in a Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) program. It identifies that they have been fixed so they are not trapped again and put under the knife a second time. I prefer the notch because it is less disfiguring but a ear-tipped cat is easier to identify from a distance. It is also more likely that a notch could be mistaken for an injury or vice versa.

The notch got me thinking. If he was a feral cat, why is he so friendly? Of course, not all notched cats are feral, some are strays, but if Frankie was caught as a stray with the intention of fixing him for adoption, why would they notch his ear? Perhaps it isn’t a notch. After all, it looks more like a slit than a triangular notch.

Frankie’s ear notch

I did a little research and found that ear tipping on the left ear is most common but there is no universal standard. Frankie’s quasi notch is on his right ear. That led me to believe it was more likely the result of a fight and didn’t think about it again until we visited my mother-in-law.

She has two cats. One of them is a gold cat named pumpkin that has the same slit on his right ear. Coincidence? Possibly. It is also possible that in this area, a small sliver of a notch in the right ear is how some vets do it.

Pumpkin

I tried to do a Google search to see what the standard is where I live on the west coast of Tampa Bay, Florida, but I found nothing concrete. I searched Petfinder for cats in my area and found four or five with a tipped ear but none with a notch. So the mystery remains. It doesn’t really matter where Frankie comes from and if I never find out, I won’t care. I just can’t help loving a good mystery.

Do you have a cat that has been notched or tipped? Do you know what is common where you live? I’d like to hear about it.

Bad Cat Chris

The Baddest Cat You'll Ever Love