Conference misery::feline_v1

    
      I'm going to call the Hudson Shelter and see what they would do
    with mama and her babies and see if they have any advice on trying
    to "catch" them if they would shelter them........  I'll see what
    I can do and I'm sure there will be others that will want to try
    to do something before winter hits........  

    Ohhhh...This note is so sad.
    
    Please keep us posted on the out come of Mom and the babies.
    
    lb

    
    
    Well called Hudson Shelter.....  To put it bluntly she would not
    put them to sleep.......  But they're not in Hudson.....  I can't
    blame her cuz they do need some kind of guidelines....  And if I
    didn't think that we would need some help capturing them I wouldn't
    have told her where they were but I guess that option is out......
    The only advice she could think of is that the best thing would
    be for someone to take them and find homes on our own....  She said
    if there left too long they will go wild and it will be almost 
    impossible to place them unless there is someone that has the room
    on their property to have them as strictly outdoor cats....
    
    C'mon now someone else must have some kind of solution to this sad
    unfair problem.....  (I hope)

    A friend placed dry cat food on the ledge to improve momma cat's
    nutrition.
    
    However, I spent most of the noon hour out there, eating lunch
    and occasionally peering into the den.  I did not see any 
    movement within.  Perhaps there has been too much activity
    and momma has moved everyone to a new den.
    
    Stay tuned...

    FYI to anyone trying to catch a feral cat or kitten:
    
    I did this.  Timothy was about 6 weeks old and had 3 siblings. 
    Mama had never been owned, and grandma had an owner, but was a totally
    outdoor, unspayed cat.  
    
    First of all, they are FAST.  Secondly, they will hole up.  Third,
    and most important, they are MEAN.  They think you will try to harm
    them, so they bite and scratch.  One of those kittens BIT THROUGH
    heavy work gloves.  Their teeth are like needles.  You do not know
    what diseases they may have, including rabies, and if one bites
    you and you don't catch it, you may need to go through nasty shots.
    
    Timothy was the only one we caught.  It took only about 36 hours
    to semi-tame him, but in the meantime he decided to escape by CHEWING
    through the wall (darn near succeeded, too), and I had to be really
    careful of my face, hands, legs, etc.  
    
    If you decide to ever try this, I figured you should know what I
    experienced.
                   Good luck!
    
                              Carol

    I looked for the cat and kittens all day yesterday, and again
    thsi morning.  There is no sign of them.  The dry catfood that
    was left behind is still there.  I believe that momma has
    moved them.
    
    (I also have not seen a chipmunk in over a week and the place
    used to be overrun with them.  Maybe momma decided to locate
    the kittens where there is a more plentiful food supply?)
    
    bill

    Like most wooded areas of Nashua, we ZK folks have feral cats. 
    My house is near the airport in Nashua (yes, Nashua has an airport)
    and I have countless feral cats.  As for them making it thru the
    winter, I have some cats in my area that have been around for years.
    They do seem to survive.  My feral cats have the advantage of a
    well stocked buffet to dine from, and I think that gives them an
    edge over the rest of the community.  But, as you have noticed by
    talking with the various shelters, there isn't much you can do about
    it.  There is no law covering cats, and as one of the animal control
    officers put it, they fall into the same category as squirrels.
    No doubt Mom has moved them elsewhere.  I sure wish there was something
    more encouraging I could tell you...
    
    Mary

    Someone we knew found a litter of wild kittens in their barn, and
    the mother took off on them.  These people notice the kittens getting
    a little scraggly, and started finding homes for them.  When we
    got ours, she was about 3 weeks old.  We immediately (on the way
    home) had her checked out by a vet, and she needed a couple of routing
    shots, but nothing major.  She turned out to be a gorgeous, friendly,
    long haired cat.  She was tamed fairly quickly, hunger will do that.
    We gave her a bath and have had her (and now her two kittens!) for
    about a year.  We give her "space" seeing that she was once wild,
    and let her go about her business when she's eating and other things
    that she might "get offended" by.  The kittens show no signs of
    having a mother born in the wild.  They revel in their luxurious
    lives, and wouldn't dream of sleeping anywhere else but on the
    waterbed.  Hannah, the mother IS very friendly, but she's not quite
    as much of a "little dope" as are the kittens.  That's where it
    shows.
    
    Stacie

    My mother's household has been known to adopt kittens from both
    feral and semi-feral backgrounds.  One of our favorites was a part
    Siamese (with lime-green eyes, and faint spiraly stripes, but still
    having darker points) that my sister made friends with from a litter
    being raised in her sandwich shop's dumpster (the rest of them ran
    off though--luckily he was close enough to weaning age).  We've also 
    had house- and yard-raised kittens turn feral on us, for unknown
    reasons whether physical or emotional
    ...they still hang around the neighborhood for food but are completely 
    uncatchable.  The dumpster cat was completely tame and affectionate,
    and knew what the litter box was without being shown; for awhile
    he showed a marked fondness for black olives (he was likely raised
    on scraps from a near-by pizza parlor), but otherwise was at least as
    civilized as everyone else. 
    
    My usual policy with cats is that if I can call to them and they
    come, then they can become used to humans, although sometimes they
    have become startled when they figure out they really don't know
    who I am.  I've seen a ~5 week old feral snarl at me when I called
    (the mother had already high-tailed it for the woods); I didn't 
    investigate further, remembering infected scratches from far-less 
    feral kitties.  If they're too young to run away or try to defend
    themselves, I'd guess your chances for successful adoption are mixed,
    although handling at an early age (> 1week, anyway) always seems
    to help them get used to humans.  You probably can't keep a truly
    feral mom around if you're going to be handling her kittens, although
    some semi-wild ones may even fearfully tolerate being ensconsed
    in warm dark safe hideaway in your house.  If you take them from wild moms
    too early, be prepared to bottle feed, which also means if they're
    less than 3 weeks old, their chances of survival are best if you don't 
    have a full-time daytime job away from home.
    
    It's a little painful to see feral kitties you can't help, what
    with winter approaching and all.  In the city or around farms, they
    can survive living in unheated sheds and hanging around vented waste heat. 
    And in the temperate regions of California they make do also.  But
    in the New England woods? 

    Last night while I was walking my dog in the parking lot here at
    ZKO, I could hear the crying of a kitten in the woods.  Don't know
    if it could have been one of the little ones .0 saw that may have
    gotten lost from the others or if it had just been thrown out of
    a car that had just driven slowly by that particular area.  It was
    too far for me to tell at the time but when I got to the area, I
    could hear the frightened crying of a kitten.
    
    I gave my dog the command to stay and took her collar off so it
    would not make any jingling sound.  I moved down the grass slope
    toward the woods calling to the kitten and it answered me each time.
    I was praying it would not be afraid of me and come or at least
    that I might catch a glimpse of where it was.  It was dark though
    and very hard to see anything unless it had the background of the
    sky.  
    
    I was heartbroken as it's crying stopped and I knew I couldn't help
    it unless I found it.  I kept calling and walking as quietly as
    I could in the brush but I guess this frightened it into staying
    quiet or it moved further away.  I hope someone finds it before
    the storm comes today but I rather doubt it.
    
    If it was one of the 3 in the feral litter, maybe by now it's mother
    has found it.  If, on the other hand, it was thrown from the car
    I saw last night - damned people like that!  That kind of person
    has no respect for another life, human or animal.
    
    

    Well, some good news:
    
    I just talked to the people who work in the mail room,
    who know what happened to some of the kittens.  It seems
    that they had all (4!) taken up residence in the large power
    transformers outside the loading dock in ZK01.  Today,
    an electrician removed them!  There was much wild 
    scrambling of people with gloves on and two of them were
    cornered, captured and taken off by adopting humans.
    
    The fate of the others is not known.  And I did not hear
    anything about the mother.
                           
    bill

    
    I'm so glad to hear this, Bill.  Too bad about the mother cat not
    getting a home but she may be just too wild to get hold of right
    now.  Maybe in time with patience, she too might find a sanctuary!
    
    Thanks for the update.  I've been constantly haunted when walking
    my dog here evenings and weekends.  I can still hear the pitiful
    crying of a kitten I heard one night but I couldn't find it in the
    dark.
    
    Pat (Mom to Holly, Buffy, D.P. Gremlin, and the dog, Cookie)