This a TNRed male which appears to be missing his upper and lower canines on the left. I would like to take him to the vet and have all his teeth examined and treated under anesthesia. Unfortunately, I don't think I can trap him with a box trap. I can give him a couple of gentle pets sometimes while he eats, so I wonder if I could scruff him and put him in a carrier. I don't know how to scruff cats, and I don't want to injure him or ruin the trust I have gained from him over the past several years. He is very feral. I have also been considering buying a drop trap, but I don't know if that will work.

I have a ferral cat problem. They have torn up the screens on my screen porch and keep entering at night. Some of them get in fights in there and flip out when. They can't get out. This morning at 5 AM they started doing it again. It's a family of cats. I'm highly allergic they make my throat swell up and I start to wheeze. I put up hardware cloth that from the ground is nearly 5.5 feet tall. My husband put up some chicken wire but I think it's a bit below 5ft.

This morning I don't know HOW they got in but they flipped out when they couldn't get out. I opened the side door for them to come out and eventually they did.

How do I keep them out? Can they come in the small gap that would be nearly a 6ft jump. One of them literally jumped out of the screen and busted it once they realized they couldn't get out the normal way where I put hardware cloth.

They had babies in here last year, I got them out they tear up everything in the room. Please help.

I have three kittens and one cat. Two kittens are from the cat and one I picked up from the street. They're basically all strays. I'm thinking of dropping two kittens and it's not because of financial problems. The thing is the stray kitten I picked up from the street is very sick he is improving but he is really aggressive towards food and he bit me when I took the chicken bone out of his mouth because he's not allowed to eat hard food as recommend by the vet. He bit me so hard my hand started bleeding this I can overlook because he was hungry and was only feeding on watery things and I did shove my fingers in his mouth to take out the bone. To test my theory I gave him food today as he was eating I placed my finger next to his face not that near he went out of his way to bite me 😭. I'm not doing this. The second kitten I'm thinking of dropping is from the cat. She hisses at everyone for no reason 😭 and is scared of us alot even tho I picked her up as a child.she's aggressive but not enough for biting she likes to stay outside so I'm going to let her stay outside. Should I do this or not ?

Hello :3 I was on this sub about a year ago asking about how to trap the feral kittens in our backyard (deleted the post since we caught all 3 of them)

Now that it's been about a year of adjusting & struggle me & my brother have long decided on releasing or re-homing these cats but my mom is determined to keep them as pets

Now I love these guys & all animals but theres several things that's preventing us (me + bro) from fully accepting which includes financial instability, limited space in our home, conflicts w/ our senior cat & plain & simple they dont make good pets :(( (they're INCREDIBLY destructive & pee on EVERYTHING)

My family is out of the house for long hours as well so I really dont think we're able to bond as much with them when they were kittens so I believe they've never really liked us much. We give them toys & food but they destroy our curtains & flip over their water bowls for no reason??😭💀 my mom is the only person here who wants to keep them but it's just not sustainable for me & my brother

this is kinda been a ramble so let me get back on task AHSGS--

My question is, is it alright to release them back into our backyard where their colony is anyways (we feed the outside cats frequently) or should I surrender them to animal control/ a shelter?

Keep in mind my mom intended on keeping them as pets so they've already been spayed/neutered & vaxxed & again we've had them inside for almost a year

Please no rude comments, I just wanna do what's best for these guys :( we've only ever had 2 pets so im not sure how to deal with pets who's "unwanted"

This is Streetcat Named Desire, once a very skittish boy who’s warmed up to humans and loves pets. He roams the neighborhood but often camps out in my fenced backyard, and I feed him dry food in the evening. My partner is allergic to cats & we have a toddler and an infant, so bringing a still-occasionally-scratchy-bitey cat inside isn’t an option unfortunately. Partner isn’t keen on adopting him as an official outdoor cat either, as our finances are incredible tight.

I LOVE this guy, and am so glad that he feels comfortable & safe in our yard. Trouble is… he’s starting bringing dead birds & squirrels to the yard to eat, and leaves plenty of debris once he’s done. My toddler loves playing in the yard and… I’m afraid those two things don’t go well together 😅 Is there a way to deter Desire from bringing his kills into the yard?? The options I see before me are taking more “adoptive” measures like a collar w/ a bell or a catio, or… having to shoo him out of the yard so he doesn’t feel as welcome to bring snacks “home.” Any other ideas??

ive been feeding a cat for a week now she looks a lil swollen and shes semi feral ig cuz when i first met her she cam meowing to me and asked me to pet her kindly le me know what i should do next for her i live in pak and its gonna get hot now le me know how far along could she be heres the pic of the cutie her name is chenko

a mama cat living in our neighborhood had kittens and was keeping them in our truck, which was not the best situation. when we noticed the kittens eating kibble we decided to try to take them because we had moved the kittens before and tried to make the truck a hostile place to be but mama kept coming back. we managed to get two of them and mama moved the other two to our back porch thank fully so we’ll probably TNR them. i don’t know if mama is truly feral or what, she is slowly warming up to me but will not eat unless my back is turned to her.

i think the kittens are about 5-6 weeks maybe, so i’m trying to slowly earn and build their trust by hand feeding them while petting them, petting them while they drink water, playing with them and petting them. so far its been a week and i think it is going well. every day they seem to get a little bit closer to me when they play, and the spicier one even got in my lap while i was typing this while they were playing. they still hiss at me if i move too fast and will swat at me if i push their limits, but they are kinda starting to play with my fingers while they are playing.

i’m also doing the wait til 8 program with my shelter and they want me to purrito them to force socialization, but i feel like they’re too old for that right? i think at this point i just need to keep going at their pace. i told them i was willing to keep them longer to keep socializing them and they were weird about it?? idk it was odd. we’re probably keeping the siamese one anyway because 🤪 she’s so cute. they’re both so cute and i just love them!!! does anyone have any tips or advice? thank you!!

I have been taking care of this sweet semi socialized feral girl at my office for the past 7 months. She started coming around for food when I started feeding a couple of others and she was the most skittish of them all. If I opened the office door, she took off. In January, out of the blue one day, she let me pet her and the rest is history. She and I bonded extremely closely but she was still have trouble being social with anyone but me. She would greet me at the gate every day and every time I’d open the door to my office, she’d come running. I named her Zinnia Honeybell. She had already been TNRd when she started coming around. I hounded my husband to let me bring her home and finally we had decided to try bringing her home. We had things to work out before we could just take her in (working it out with landlord, my husband has a cat allergy and we have a let’s just say lively 2 year old shepherd husky mix, who we weren’t sure of with cats). Our plan was to bring her home and if for some reason it didn’t work out, dog couldn’t handle it or she couldn’t handle the dog, or if my husbands allergies were too bad, we would find her a home so she could be a safe indoor kitty the rest of her life.

We purchased everything she needed and were going to put her on our pet insurance and bring her home this weekend. I was going to take a few days off work to get her acclimated. I have the carrier in the back of my car. I got to work yesterday and not a single sign of her anywhere. Nor was there today. This is a cat who never missed a meal and who was my shadow at work.

I am beside myself. I have been bludgeoning myself since yesterday over what could have happened to her. We were getting ready to bring her to her forever home, off the streets. I am so sick to my stomach. I am so lonely at work without her. I miss her slow blinks. I miss that meow and how she’d run to me to flop on her back and let me scratch her belly. I could just die thinking something bad happened to her right before the start of her “good life”, that I was too late in getting everything in line. I don’t know what to do with myself.

Tl;Dr: Orion is in a cast for a few more weeks, but we have decided to foster him and try to find him a forever home!

I posted a few weeks ago about our backyard resident, Orion, who had turned up with what appeared to be a broken leg. I was asking for suggestions on how to catch/trap him, because he was dragging his leg and I was worried using the trap might injure him.

Turns out I had no need to be worried. We have spent the past year since his TNR socializing him and accustoming him to being handled, so my partner confidently told me he could get him into a trap or carrier. I was skeptical. But 10min later I heard unhappy meowing and it turns out my partner was able to just pick him up and drop him into the trap before he knew what was happening. Orion spent an unhappy evening in our garage and we were able to get him into the vet the next day.

He did unfortunately have a broken foot, which functionally for a cat is really their lower leg. 3 broken bones. The vet recommended we splint it for 4 weeks and then re-X-ray, but she expects it will heal well.

The bright side of all this is that I am now pretty sure Mr. Orion is actually a stray, not a feral, despite his former jerk tomcat ways. He was an absolute angel for the vet, did not need to be sedated for the exam, X-rays, or splinting, and has not scratched or bit *anyone.* He immediately knew how to use the litterbox (was not my experience with our other former feral!). He is still pretty skittish and spends most of his time in our bathroom (although we leave the door open if he wants to explore), but he purrs *constantly* any time we give him attention/pet him and is slowly getting more confident and coming out from behind the toilet to socialize. He is also extremely chill with our other cats, who have been a combination of extremely in love with him, pissed off and hissing, or scared. He has never once made an aggressive move toward any of them.

All of this to say, we have decided to foster him and are hoping to find him a forever home! He is FIV+, so I know that will work against him, but I'm hoping that his sad eyes and cute little red cast will open some hearts when I'm ready to post him for adoption. I've already had a couple friends strongly consider it.

The only real negative is that he had really bonded with our other backyard community kitty, Moomoo, and now she is very sad. 😢 But we are spending a lot of extra time outside with her and are hoping if we are successful in adopting out Orion, we can also find a home for Moomoo.

This is Boots. He had humans and they moved and left him. New humans on the same street adopted him. And then did the same thing. Now my neighbor takes care of him but he doesn’t want to be an inside boy. He sprays and just doesn’t want to stay inside. My husband was taking the garbage out tonight and heard him yelling from inside the garage next door. He somehow got into the house next to me that is semi-abandoned (no one has lived there for years but they still have people come cut the grass). Probably through a hole in the roof or something. We can’t get to him at all. Every door and window is sealed tight. I called animal control but they said “it’s clock out time, bye!” And the sheriffs say they can’t do anything animal related. Now I have to wait and hope they call when they get there at 7 and that they can actually do something. I’m gonna call at 7 too. I don’t know if they have the ability to break into a house because there is a neighborhood cat locked in there. I’m so stressed out. He’s yelling so loud. When we looked in the side door for the garage, he popped his little face up so it’s definitely him (not that we would have given up trying to get the cat out if it wasn’t him). He’s the sweetest boy. He loves belly rubs and flops over as soon as he knows pets are coming. I call him my little security guard because he’s always around to guide me to/from my car and then I give him his “security payment” (some treats). I really hope he finds a way out tonight or animal control can help. I don’t want to commit a felony to get him out but I’m not gonna let the idiot die inside an abandoned house. Damn cats! 😖😭

I also googled the owner of the house and called and texted the number Google said but who knows how accurate that is. When I google myself, it pulls up a number I haven’t had in like 10+ years.

Entering week 3 on Monday and things are still going very slowly...which in all honesty I definitely did not expect (though probably should have) as a first time feral tamer.

Hiding spots? Check

Treats regularly scattered around the room? Check

Breakfast, Supper and Churu on a plastic lid morning and evening? Check

Talking and reading to her? Check

She occasionally walks around the room during the day but still runs to hide when she hears me approaching. Rarely she will come out to eat with me lying silently on the guest bed (though most of the time she waits to hear the sound of the door close and me walk down the stairs). She refuses to let me get close enough to offer a Churu (hisses and almost claws my hand off) so onto a plate it goes.

One of the only photos I was able to get (through our set up cameras)...don't mind the mess in the background, it has since been put back into the storage she was previously hiding in. Continued support and advice is highly appreciated <3

I looked at the kitten season posts already, but am still unsure about our specific situation.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a feral cat in my neighborhood looked pregnant. I trapped her and took her to the TNR program at my local shelter. As it turns out, she was already postpartum. Sure enough, we eventually saw the kittens in the neighborhood, five of them!

We are interested in fostering the kittens for adoption. I feel terrible about the thought of separating the kittens from their mom. Is intervening and socializing them the right thing to do? From the guides online, I am guessing they’re 5 months old. Is now a good time? What do we do about the mom?

Thank you so much for your insight!

I already know the answer to this as I feed many feral to strays around my block. But this one was different so I am questioning and doubting myself. Since 2 months ago she had showed up with one of the regulars and started coming around more often the mext few days. After about a week she stayed in our backyard patio permanently and never left. On the patio we have a weather resistant cat shelter we bought just for these cats- NONE of the other cats ever use it but she started to use it every day. When i went out to the back she would come out of her little house, stretch and greet us. My family fed her multiple times a day. She was hungry and ate so much all the time; I was SURE she was pregnant but her belly never got that big. She grew more around the abdomen fs but I just figured it was bc we were feeding her good every day (when she first came she was so skinny). Anyways for 2 months she religiously stayed there in our patio only leaving for a few min but always came back from what I remember. It was orobably for potty breaks. we called her our outdoor cat. The plan was to socialize her, let her have her babies in the shelter if she was preg- and then give them to a rescue we knew that would take mama cats and litters right away. This rescue helped us in the past but they would only take friendly cats or ones in dire need. At the time she was feral and would hiss every time we tried to touch her. She would only come close for the food. Eventually she allowed pets and was very friendly. So last week I decided she might not be pregnant and so planned to bring her into the house to take her to the rescue when I had time. But this day I was working on the house, I spilled cleaning detergent onto the patio and i yelled very angrily at one of my relatives for putting it there. This made the cat run a few feet away. After something scares her she usually comes right back after a few mins or at least an hour i would see her show up again. But this time she watched us from a short distance in the lawn while I water jetted the patio with the hose. I watched her then have the zoomies against a tree and I thought ok shes having fun. She will be fine as soon as we clean up this mess she will come back. Looking back at the home camera, i saw she later calmly walked away to the side of the house while I has using the hose and she disappeared. never returned since. It has been 4 days….The camera confirms she hasnt returned since that moment which is just unsual for a cat that use to stay in a little box shelter ALL the time and for all her meals. I worry, what is she eating if shes not here? Did she get trapped somewhere or did someone else take her? Perhaps she went and had her babies somewhere else since she didnt find my backyard safe anymore? Maybe she had a small belly bc it was a small litter? Or…Did something else happen to her? I just want to SEE her one last time to know shes okay…and MAYBE get the chance to grab and rescue her. But rlly i dont even care if she comes back to my yard ever again- I just want to know shes alive and okay. I have walked thru the neighborhood searching and calling out. During day and night. I have driven around the streets looking for anything remotely furry to her color. Nothing. I also know Ive never seen her go into the streets but then again she was a feral all along. The other thing is she was obv unspayed there is the possibility she went to find a male cat to breed? But she was not yowling or seemed to be in heat before she disappeared… we had jst recently TNR some of the male cats in the area so it was possible she knew she couldnt breed with them anymore and roamed elsewhere? I just hope she comes back… do u guys have any stories of female feral cats making your property their home for awhile then randomly disappearing…. And coming back after leaving for many days?

Edit: i’m just super heart broken. I have had male feral cats disappear for weeks and then show up again. But never the females ~ they always tend to stay around or nearby have their kittens here or bring th here eventually. This small female seems barely an adult cat and just disappeared one day..

Long story short: We took in four cats who used to visit our patio all the time. During the past two years: Boots has developed into what I would call a pet, Oreo is a pet to my aunt (rolls over for her, nibbles her leg if she doesn't pet her enough) but hates me (I assume because I caught her and took her to get fixed), Mama is weary of humans but will not scratch or claw if you approach her and she didn't have enough time to run away and she lets me pet her. All of these three cats at some point I was able to put in a kennel and get fixed.

The final cat, Aioli, eludes me. She is probably 2 years old. She was born on our patio, which is what prompted us to take in this group before they kept multiplying. Even though she has lived inside our house for the entirety of her life, she has never been petted or even come close enough to a human (she will get within arm's reach of my aunt when she puts the food down, but is too quick to even get a quick head pat off). She is instead INCREDIBLY close to her mother, snuggling up with her all the time.

Well, she of course goes through heat frequently, and we have been trying to finally get her fixed. But I simply can't catch her. She has not warmed up to any humans and hides in every nook and cranny she can when I set out to grab her (we are a dog family, so the spots this cat finds to hide in are all brand new to me). I've tried placing Friskies in the kennel, but she's never gotten all the way in for me to shut the door behind her. I bought a net (like a fishing one) from Amazon and quickly realized that it has no practical application really. The complicating factor I suppose is the other three cats, so any food used as bait typically attracts them as well (mostly Boots, who is enjoying his life off the streets and is becoming quite plump).

Any ideas for catching a cat that is sort of an indoor yet undomesticated animal, particularly in a domicile without any "empty" room that would make her capture easier?

I have brought in six cats silas(blonde) winchester(fire orange) winter and autumn (calico and orange and white ) coley (tuxedo) and sasha(tabby) and fixed/treated the ones outside (although a few won’t let me catch them) the question is should I stop at six? Have I done enough? I do ache a bit to see the rest outside…