!!! This Baby Needs A Home NOW !!!

Hi everyone, I have a story to tell:

Last November 2011, in the middle on an island winter, three kittens were abandoned here at the dairy, probably because they knew it was a cat colony. My husband manage to lure and catch two of them, one a grey and the other a multicolor. They were as close to ferals without actually being feral as a cat could get; they were here awhile before being caught. I kept them for a week, socializing them then phoned Cat Action once they'd calmed down and we could handle them better. After two weeks, I gave them to Cat Action; they already had placements for them thanks to a Kijiji Ad I had placed. 

She suddenly found herself all alone and having to fend for herself, by herself. 

Her two siblings were gone, caught by my husband and re-homed by me.

The title of this blog is that same title as my Kijiji Ad

But, there was a third kitten. One that refused all attempts to help her and resisted any food or shelter. She scavenged in the barn for mice and rats, eating the grain off the floor when really hungry. Being a interloper and unwelcome by the colony, the cats here bullied and chased her away constantly. Finally, she started following them to my patio door where I provided food, milk and shelter during the winter months. She would always run, though she'd come to eat whatever was left, I could not come near. This past Friday, June 15th, all that changed. I put some scraps out for them and she came just close enough for me to touch her, once she allowed that, I took a further chance and picked her up. 

Does she look 9 months to you?

Once inside the house she was pretty skiddish so we took turns holding her and talking to her so she'd calm and realize we weren't going to hurt her. My cats of course will tolerate her but they aren't always kind; she spent the first night as far behind the dryer in a closed porch as she could get and it took my hubby to coax her out the next morning. She hid a lot on Saturday because of my cats but we took her out and made her mind by putting her out on the sofa. She soon caught on that she didn't need to hide. I fed her a tin of tuna to help put some meat on her bones. She's in fairly good health but very malnourished for a 9 to 10 month old cat. Yes, that's what I said  ~ 9 to 10 months and for all that, she is tiny!  

 Very close to becoming feral, there was just enough 'tame' cat left in her to accept being re-socialized

She is extremely affectionate, follows me round the house like a puppy and wants to be on my lap whenever I sit down. She tries very hard to be accepted by my cats and will immediately run up to them, trying to bond, only to be nastily rebuffed by my three females. 

Winston by porch door

Only Winston shows her a kindness. So much so that at night, when she is in the porch for the night, he will lay beside the porch door as if staying near to keep her company and my females at bay. She'd very readily take to other animals and she'd be great around children. I am hoping my Kijiji Ad will get some attention for her and she will find a new home soon. 

If anyone is interested in her please use the email at the top right of my blog to contact me. 

Catspaw

Help For The Forgotten

What is the best way to help ferals, strays, abandoned cats and kittens that you can do right in your own neighborhood? What kinds of programs can you look into to help the situation? How can you and your children become pro-active?

Yevgeniy Mazor-Thomas of Grafton, a vet technician/assistant supervisor of the Luke & Lily Lerner Spay/Neuter Clinic at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, left, prepares paperwork for a recently trapped cat as Spay Worcester co-chairman and Shrewsbury Animal Control Officer Leona Pease prepares to move the cat from a trap to the transfer cage at the left

Lets start with a trap-neuter-return program where people's endeavors are geared toward lowering the number of these cats by trapping them in humane cages, taking them to vets and places like Cat Action to have them neutered and spayed. You may know it as trap-neuter-spay-return or trap-neuter-vaccinate-return; all are endorsed by the ASPCA, SPCA, the Humane Society and Cat Action, here on Prince Edward Island, Canada.
According to web site of the American Association of Feline Practitioners, stray and feral cats are “humanely trapped, examined, vaccinated, and surgically sterilized by veterinarians.” This is the same here in Canada. After being fixed and shots given, feral cats are freed and returned to their familiar environment and hopefully, cared for by volunteers who provide food, shelter and monitor them for sickness. I know there is an actual House on PEI where a couple, through the aid of people like me, provide shelter, medicine when needed, food and water for them. 


The advantages obviously include:

• Benefits for feral, stray and abandoned cats. Neutered and spayed cats sometimes gain weight and have fewer health problems like breast, testicular and uterine cancers. I have four fixed cats of my own, only one female has gained weight. Spaying also reduces risks that coincide with constant pregnancy. Fewer females in heat means fewer toms attracted to an area so fewer, potentially harm-causing cat fights. 
• Benefits for people. Spaying and neutering these cats is an excellent population control where behaviors that include fighting and marking are also reduced, while benefits such as rodent control continue. Ultimately less cat suffering also means less human suffering in the face of dying or injured cats.

A feral cat on Ellsworth Street investigates a trap; the cat eventually was attracted by the food inside and was caught

 Of course, not everyone is a fan of this program. There are fish and wildlife advocates that insist re-releasing feral and strays after neutering simply constitutes re-abandonment and doesn’t permanently address the larger problem and I agree. If we were to add a Rehabilitation Program where people or families offered to learn how to tame these cats, then tamed and socialized the one that will accept human intervention and a Re-homing Program for the ones that were tamed, it would go a very long way to cleaning up the problem.

Trapped cat looks out from the a transfer cage

Some advocate relocation or simply killing the cats instead. Relocation sounds good but it is highly ineffective because it creates an unwanted vacuum effect. Any cats, be they feral, strays, abandoned or our pets, gather where there are resources, the food, water and shelter they need. I just have to look out of my patio door every morning to see that and I live on a dairy that is a registered cat colony here on the island. Believe me when I tell you that, people are already attempting to ''relocate'' unwanted animals when they dump them on the farm!  So when an existing colony is relocated or completely eradicated, before long a new group of cats that exist on the outskirts of our society will discover the same resources and move in to fill said 'vacuum.
Relocation is unappealing for other reasons too; cats, like raccoons, are very territorial so a relocated cat just might attempt to find its way home and suffer an accident, life-threatening injury or death on the way. Then again, the relocation area itself might already have an established colony that will fight for its right to not allow new cats in or it may lack proper food, water and enough sheltered areas for all of them. These are animals that migrate from colony to colony or house to house. Unless a colony’s life is in danger from something like sickness or overcrowding most experts agree that relocation is not a permanent solution.

Dogs are just as vulnerable and group together in packs when feral. Fixing, taming and re-homing works for them too

Most people are humane and not willing to support eradication. With a trap-neuter-return effort, “people will give their time, money, and resources,” says Slater, author of Community Approaches to Feral Cats. “But if you’re catching and euthanizing cats, in most cases you just won’t get volunteers to do that.”
TNR is an excellent teaching tool for people because it gets us more involved and doing something about the situation. “It gets people to think about how we can prevent cats from ending up on the street and how we can manage cat populations.” When we and our children are pro-active, everyone wins. I am referencing this information from pets.webmd.com.


My next blog will be concerning some things that you may be able to do for the cats in your area. The site where the pictures came from is http://www.telegram.com


Catspaw

Thoughts On The Lives Of The Forgotten

The question must be posed, what can you do, today, to help feral, stray and abandoned cats? Why is this such an issue for me?


I grew up with cats. My childhood memories are chock full of all the unique and different personality traits and characters of the cats our family bought from pet stores, picked up in shelters, saved from the hostile outdoors and sometimes from people's inhumanity. I guess it goes back a long way to my mother who saved any and every animal she could and nursed them back to health when we lived in Whitehorse, Yukon ~ Land Of The Midnight Sun. When my dad was away during the winter working in different town up the highway because there was little work in town, it was my mother who took care of things at home, sometimes with a shot gun. One winter my siblings and I helped her save the lives of a mother puma and her starving cubs. Another, I watched my mother train the shotgun on a large Black Bear that had come to raid the garage way at the back of our house. She would never have shot it; only if it threatened would she have let a shot off in the air to scare it away. When they did come round, they never threatened us, they were just hungry. You could say that my love and respect for animals goes back to my childhood when my parents taught me the value of preserving and taking responsibility for the family pets and wild animals that on occasion needed human intervention to survive. They also taught us the importance of understanding that this planet and all that is in it does not belong to us humans, its all 'on loan' from a powerful, Almighty God who will judge each and every one of us according to how we have treated His Creation. In light of my beliefs, I'd like to provide some information that I hope you will make use of and find helpful and inspiring.


Ferals, wild cats, strays, abandoned and throwaways ~ we have so many names and designations for these mysterious felines we occasionally catch a glimpse of peeking out from under our porch in that 'frightened' way or darting as fast as their paws can carry them into abandoned buildings, as far from our reach as they can manage. Most of them share a single destiny: short-lived and harsh lives. Fortunately, helping feral and abandoned cats isn’t difficult if one wants to help. The website WebMD went to their experts in animal health and care for the tips we all need to make a difference in the lives of our feline friends who are living, quite literally, on the edge. Please use it.  http://pets.webmd.com/cats/helping-stray-and-feral-cats
There are some good stories of intervention and rescue and I'd like to share them with you. 

Pete rescued and brought in for recovery. His eye needed to be  surgically removed after he was hit by a car. He was absolutely terrified when he was first brought in but as he started to recover, he became more  trusting and changed into a marvelous, gentle little cat.

After receiving tender care and attention at a recovery center. Pete is now happily homed with a very loving couple in Switzerland. 




 Then there's Holly's story:

"Little Holly was found in this terrible condition. The infection was spreading all over her face. There was no choice but to have her eye removed. The operation to remove her eye was Eur 85"

Sweet little Holly recovering from her eye operation. She is left with only partial sight in her remaining eye and now needs daily medication.

A feral cat is any cat who is too poorly socialized to be handled by humans and because of that, cannot be placed into a typical pet home. There are approximately 70 million feral cats worldwide, about the same number as their counterparts who have homes. Usually ferals are the offspring of cats who were either lost or abandoned by their owners and grew up without any kind of proper socialization or interaction by humans so they have no bonds to connect with us on. Females can become pregnant as early in their young lives as 16 weeks of age, then go on to have two to three or more litters a year, every year. So the feral cat population and the problems that arise from it grows and becomes a self perpetuating cycle of suffering. In just seven years of life, a single female cat and her kittens can produce 420,000 more cats. One can understand a certain sense of urgency in intervening to help prevent a bad situation from becoming worse. 
Lewis... 

"Lewis, a young one-eyed cat who was dumped by his owner was brought to a shelter in a very bad state. He spent a few months in the recovery center where he grew healthy and finally recovered. Lewis can be seen enjoying a new start in a program called Homed Animals".

Lewis...  
I'm more than sure that some people have romanticized their free-roaming lives, unfortunately the truth is very far from this fantasy. The reality is much more devastating; ferals, strays, throwaways and abandoned cats/kittens all too often live in vacant lots, dodge cars in the streets and eat from trash cans whenever they can find a scrap of food. They face injuries that become infected and cause them extreme pain, diseases and an endless cycle of near constant pregnancy of which only a few kittens survive and they all suffer extremes in human treatment and elements of the weather. The life of ferals, strays and abandoned cats is not a natural one and can sometimes last for just two or three years before you find them dead in your flower bed or beside the bushes in your back yard.
Feral cats also leave issues on our doorstep that we complain about but do little to nothing constructive to aid the situation, including the noisy cat fights over that empty box one of them is living in that the other wants, odors, possibly from infections and urinating to mark their small scrap of territory; then there are the flea infestations that our pets get from them and the inevitable breeding that creates even more unwanted cats in your already overcrowded neighborhoods. The experts are agreed that one of the very best ways to help feral cats and cat groups known as colonies, is through local neutering and spay programs done through Cat Action, the SPCA or ASPCA and other groups.


All over the net there are pleas just like this one:
"Unfortunately, at present we do not have sufficient fund to keep the ward open. This means that there will be no place for the cats to go for recovery. It would also mean we would have no place where to keep rescued abandoned cats until they can be re-homed. PLEASE help us keep this 'ward' open. We need your monthly donation to enable us to carry on with this voluntary work. Payment methods OR contact us: SASG, PO Box 31, St. Pauls Bay, Malta''.

The results of your tax returned donations are this:

"A few of the cats that have received shelter at the ward. Many of these cats have now found new homes and have started a new life with loving and caring owners. Many now live in Germany, a few in Switzerland and some in Malta".

In my next blog I will provide some ideas that I see caring people, including me, doing to help put an end to the suffering and overpopulation of these street animals and will share a story or two from my own, up close and personal experiences. So, stay tuned. The fat lady hasn't sung yet on this issue and their is still time and hope. In the meantime, here is another site to look at http://users.waldonet.net.mt/sasg/rescue.html
Cat Action team on Prince Edward Island  http://www.cats-pei.ca/

 Cat and Colony Care

 Colony Coordinator

Diane Minick

dianeminick@hotmail.com

566-2012

 Prince County Colony Care

Beverly Hillier

ubefre@hotmail.com

836-3905

 West Prince County Colony Care

Gayle Adams

gayleradams@hotmail.com

859-2487 

Shelter Coordinator/ Media Contact

Donald Turner

donald@dstenterprises.ca

        963-3179

Catspaw

More On Feral Cats

The caption on the website reads: 'She Deserves To Live

Feral cats are the descendants of our domesticated cats that have  returned to their wild state. They are distinguished from the local stray cat population ... pet cats that have been lost, abandoned or simply thrown on the side of the road and survive the fling from the car window. Most ferals are born in the wild while the offspring of a stray can also be considered feral by virtue of also being born in the wild. What constitutes wild? The brush at the back of your yard, the small forest across the road in a rural area; the city park is home to more than just pigeons!

Trapped feral for spay or neuter

Feral cats are a growing problem in Australia where they prey on a wide variety of the local wildlife; bird populations of cockatoos and other species suffer at their paws but they are just trying to survive like any other animal. In the arid and semi-arid areas of the country their primary food sources are mostly the introduced European rabbits and house mice that some genius figured was a good idea to bring over. In the forests and urbanized environs they feed mostly on the native marsupial prey that's available, this is based on the 22 studies that were done and summarized in the Dickman report in 1996. Unfortunately, in many of the arid parts of Australia where rabbits don't thrive, the cats take the native rodents which includes bird and reptile populations that form the smaller portion of the cats diets.

Cat with no home, no one to look after him but himself and he's punished for it

Feral cats have become the apex predators in some local ecosystems but in others they are preyed on by feral dogs, dingoes and coyotes. They have become the food sources of much larger animals like wolves, bears, cougars and leopards. Bobcats, the lynx, hyenas, even fishers have taken feral cats as a meal. As have local crocodiles, snakes, foxes and other birds of prey. The overall effects on wildlife vary but the impact of our domestic and feral cats on local wildlife is still a centuries old debate.

Feral Dogs

Australian Dingo

 

Coyote taking refuge in empty bus, as much a victim as the feral cats

 

 

More victims of human inhumanity

 

 

These are the predators of the feral cats that we humans have created in colonies round the globe over the past century. 


No animal deserves this treatment from a humane, civilized society and yet...

In1916 a report was done for the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture entitled The Domestic Cat: Bird Killer, Mouser and Destroyer of Wildlife. In this report, noted Ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush stated in the preface:
"Questions regarding the value or in-utility of the domestic cat and problems connected with limiting its more or less unwelcome outdoor activities are causing much dissension. The discussion has reached an acute stage. Medical men, game protectors and bird lovers call on legislators to enact restrictive laws. Then ardent cat lovers rouse themselves for combat. In the excitement of partisanship many loose and ill-considered statements are made."


This report actually cited Extinct Birds, a book published in 1905 by zoologist Walter Rothschild who stated, "man and his satellites, cats, rats, dogs and pigs are the worst and in fact the only important agents of destruction of the native avifaunas wherever they go."

Stephens Island Wren, extinct bird species

Rothschild went on to give several examples of cats in general causing the extermination of some bird species on islands.

Apparently the man gave equally no thought to how these feral and domesticated cats got there in the first place and that it took some brilliant 'human' to come up with the idiotic idea of populating already populated islands with rabbits and cats in the first place! Really, some people ought to try 'thinking' before they talk out loud!!


Even today there are farmers and gamekeepers that see feral cats as absolute vermin to be exterminated at all cost. Because the feral cat populations catch and eat ground nesting birds like pheasants and partridge that are protected, for no better reason than for people to kill them in flight when they go on their hypocritical bird hunts ~ not unlike the excuses they give for local fox hunting. To protect their birds some gamekeepers have resorted to setting traps and shooting any feral cats they find, on sight, as part of their ongoing, so-called pest control campaigns. Does this sound like a charmed life of freedom to you?


Please, think twice before dumping your unwanted cats on some farm or dairy or by the side of the road, your actions have direct consequences for these animals. Do the more humane thing and at least take the unwanted animal to a shelter or SPCA. Lets not forget that these animals actually 'trust' us to have their best interests at heart. No animal, pet or otherwise, is expendable. If they do become expendable in our world view, which animal is next? Will it be an animal or perhaps an unwanted child. Ask yourself.

Help me, don't hurt me ~ the choice is yours, not mine

Catspaw

Computer Update and New Blogs

I'm sure you all know what this is like...

No, I'm not back yet but I will be picking up the computer today. In the meantime, I'm working on some blogs concerning feral cats that I hope will be both informative and inspiring. 

Welcome to MY World!

Come on, I know you've had days, perhaps weeks and months like this!!!




Just admit it.

Thank you all for weathering the computer storm with me. 

Lets hope for no more Crashed Hard Drives this time

Catspaw

Do You Have Feral Cats Where You Live?

Believe it or not, cats are not native to all parts of the world and in many parts of the world, feral cats are the descendants of domestic cats that have been left behind or simply abandoned by travelers and visitors to a particular country. As a result, these feral cats can and probably do cause harm to foreign environments by preying on local species in the same way as they do in our back yards. This may be especially true on isolated islands where ferals have sometimes had a substantial and deleterious effect on the local fauna such as damaging trees and other plants that the native species use.

A clowder of feral cats and kittens

"Feral" is the word we use to refer to an animal that is not friendly when approached by us but it can also be applied to any domesticated animal that has been without human contact for anywhere from a long period of time to its lifetime. Hissing and growling are their self-defensive behaviors which, over time may change as the animal, whether "feral" or "stray", begins their journey towards a mutual trust between the humans that choose to provide food, water and care and the feral cat(s). 


Feral cats and strays differ only slightly in their behaviors especially if the stray cat has not been completely cut off from human interaction. Feral cats, born and living outdoors without any contact or care by people have been tamed to the point of being adoptable provided they are completely removed from their wild environment before their truly feral behaviors have been established and set into their personalities. Such behaviors are set while the kittens are still being raised by their mother as she teaches them to avoid human contact and that people are something to fear.

Feral cats display defensive behaviors and postures towards any person who ventures to come too close to them, then they run and hide.

Feral kitten eating a rabbit

Lifespans of ferals are difficult to determine with any kind of accuracy. One study states a median age of 4.7 years with a possible range somewhere between 0 to 8.3 years; yet other sources claim a mean lifespan of a meager 2 to 8 years before death, rarely from natural causes. For contrast a people raised cat, at birth, has an average life expectancy of 12 to 14 years for a male indoor cat with females living usually, a year maybe two longer. Some domesticated cats have lived until the grand old age of 25 years being well cared for by their human companions.

Ferals take their toll on native Australian Cockatoos

Throughout the Age of Discovery passing ships released a few rabbits onto islands with the idea of a future food source for other travelers that stopped there. Very generous but ill conceived as over time they multiplied out of control by eating through their habitats so cats were introduced to keep their numbers down along with the mice and rats. The cats tended to favor local species over the rabbits; they were both ecologically naive to the islands and much easier to hunt. Then their numbers began to increase dramatically and they colonized the islands themselves; the very people who introduced both rabbit and cat saw them as pests to be exterminated. A completely human caused problem with the animals losing on all sides! Do we not have the sense not to create situations like this? Or to resolve them without the usual cruelty that we inflict.


Our historical records date the arrival of ferals in Australia to be somewhere around 1824. In spite of this its been suggested that they have been in Australia long before the Europeans settled it; they may have arrived as a result of Dutch shipwrecks back in the 17 hundreds or years before that arriving from present day Indonesia on Macassan fisher ships and trepangers who frequented Australia's shores during the past century. However they arrived, anywhere in the world, feral cats have not lead a charmed life. Rather, its been a very difficult life with nothing but hardships and unkindness from their environments and, most often from human contact. 

They deserve better and its up to us, who claim we care, to rescue and tame them, to provide medical care and a safe home for these 'lost' cats to live out what is left of their lives in relative safety and comfort. Even the wildest feral can be tamed with enough time and commitment - I have managed, these years since, to tame a few; some of the barn cats on the farms and diaries I have lived on had feral cats that eventually came around to my gentle care of them. I have even managed to find homes for a few that finally realized they could have the life of a domesticated cat. Its worth pondering on the next time you see a cat in need, whether a feral, a stray or just lost and frightened. Remember, the responsibility is yours.

This feral won't go hungry today but what about tomorrow?

Catspaw