Rescue Story: Happy Feral Cats
I mentioned a few days ago that I’d helped take care of my neighbor and friend Denise’s feral cats last week. She feeds twice daily and I took the mid-day feeding, walking one block up the hill, and took my camera each day because any cat I see is a potential model, and the world of cats had just better get used to it.
Denise has a colony of at least a dozen that began with two litters of four kittens each born to a feral mother we couldn’t trap. She had begun to feed them and thank goodness she met someone in a store who was aware of HCMT. Since that first big trapping effort in 2015 I’ve helped her keep after the new ones, injured or ill ones, and the kittens who were born to moms we didn’t trap in time. Over the years just about every cat who ends up outdoors passes through there, some stay, some disappear, some are friendly, some are feral, some live around the house, others head off to other places they’ve found to live. A varied number of others show up now and then, or for one meal or the other, and also show up where others feed too. Some of them are freeloaders who come for a free meal. It doesn’t matter—everybody gets their chance at a meal and several bowls of water.
Feeding that many cats obviously means there are a fair number of instructions of where and what food and in which bowl! And Denise uses ceramic bowls so they need to be washed before each meal. Here is a little gallery of Denise feeding them the day before they left when I went up for my marching instructions. Denise can touch or pet or even brush just about all of them, and of course they all have names, and they are friendly and trusting with her. That means, of course, like all cats they get under foot when you feed them, and they act like their starved! (More pretty pictures below.)
Shimmer tells her to hurry it up, lady!
They haven’t eaten in days, of course.
The weather was soooooo hot, and I actually didn’t see too many of them each day, and it took a few days for them to adjust to the change in their feeding. Some of them escaped before their moment of stardom, but others just looked right at me.
These two are new and may be friendly. I will share the photos to make sure they aren’t lost or don’t belong to anyone. We will trap them soon and get them checked over.
MooMoo shows up a few times because he’s excessively cute. He acts like he’s scared of me and runs away, then he rolls around. Here, he’s waiting for lunch.
One of the days I came up MooMoo was having his morning roll on the sidewalk. I see him do this pretty frequently when I go past. He had a great time.
Then he saw me!
Hope you enjoyed them!
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Weekly schedule of features:
Sunday: Essays, Pet Loss, Poetry, The Artist’s Life
Monday: Adoptable Cats, TNR & Shelters
Tuesday: Rescue Stories
Wednesday: Commissioned Portrait or Featured Artwork
Thursday: New Merchandise
Friday: Book Review, Health and Welfare, Advocacy
Saturday: Your Backyard Wildlife Habitat, Living Green With Pets, Creating With Cats
And sometimes, I just throw my hands in the air and have fun!
Lovely pictures of beauties!
Thank you, Anita!
They are adorable and look happy and well taken care of, which sure makes us smile too. We have a family of 11 ferals and we totally love them like family too.
Brian, thanks for caring for all of them, and for setting an example with what you do!
Kudos to all who work to take care of these beautiful animals.
It really takes a neighborhood!