Healthy Happy Feral Cat Colony of over 200 Cats (over 8000 Hours of Volunteer Work)
This is a healthy and happy feral cat colony in Canada. They appear to be living in a forest. A lot of the cats are semi-feral or domesticated (and ready to be adopted) judging by the video which you can see below. In fact the organisation which manages the colony, tinykittens.com, tell us that 120 of the cat have been adopted.
They have completed the TNR program on the colony and they say on Facebook that they were pleased in October 2017 that they didn’t see a single pregnant female at their feeding station which they correctly state was a sign that the TNR program was a success as the population size had stabilized. The number of cats spayed and neutered is 285.
Info about the 200+ cat colony. Courtesy: TinyKittens.com
They state that $36,680 has been spent on veterinary care, food and equipment to date on the colony. I think that is quite an interesting snippet of information. It takes considerable funding to manage well a feral cat colony of this size.
It seems that ringworm might be a problem in the colony because they tell us that 39 kittens from the colony have or had ringworm. Ringworm is very contagious between cats in my experience and from cats to humans.
Tinykittens work in conjunction with Langley Animal Protection Society with respect to the TNR part of the project. Their goal, as always concerning feral cat colonies, is to reduce the number of unwanted kittens born through an effective TNR program.
They make an interesting point about post-operative care on feral cats after spaying. They say that one of the difficult aspects of TNR is keeping cats in traps for up to 3 days to recover from the surgery. It is stressful. They considered it impossible to give pain meds to feral cats for 2 to 3 days following surgery and keep them in a low stress clean and comfortable cage free environment but they appear to have changed their mind. They say that they have been able to administer pain medication, check spay incisions and evaluate the feral cats’ personalities to enable them to make decisions about allowing cats to be adopted into family homes if appropriate while others can return to the feral cat colony.
They seem to have turned on its head the idea that an injured feral cat should be euthanized because they say that they have successfully treated injured feral cats.
“The goal of our new Feral Recovery Ward is to allow feral cats to have an extra week or two to recover from their spays in a low-stress, cage-free environment.”
“So far, every injured feral we’ve brought in has been treated successfully, and either returned or adopted!”
Tinykittens operate in Canada. The creator of their website is a programmer (handy!) and she runs the rescue’s HQ as well. Her name is Shelly Roche.
Note: the video is embedded from Facebook (it’s on FB and is viewable here). If FB delete it, it will stop functioning.
The cats in the video look fine and friendly. As for cost, the time factor wasn’t mentioned: how long were the cats cared for. My own experience caring for my cats (varied from 4 to 16 cats) over 20 years in food alone topped $120,000; then add to that veterinary care and I pushed $150k. And I’ll emphasize that though I’m still in debt it’s been worth it.
I haven’t worked a lot with feral cats, but the houseless cats I’ve worked with have been great. There’s another I’m trying to bring in who really needs it. I’ve experimented with ways of gaining their trust so as to get them in quicker, and the best way I’ve found is to lay on my back in sight of them, usually at night. I get to look at the stars and within a few minutes they, and particularly one who’s been especially difficult come up and rub all up and down my sides, let me pet and that’s it. I get up on my knees crouching forward on my elbows and we sit side by side as if litter mates. This one hasn’t been neutered yet either. Cats who seem feral may not be entirely. They may have received a little love early in life but living on the street, shunned and run off by all makes them hate life I’m sure. They just need that gesture of complete trust to come around again. It goes both ways and I bet if more people tried this way, they might see the same success I have.
Awesome! I’ve done that with the ferals and dumped cats in my area. Except that I don’t lay down-too many cactus spines. But I sit on a couple of bricks and talk to them. It may take a bit longer for me to gain their trust, but in the end most of them accept me. Unfortunately, there are many predators-animal, reptile and human and there are now no more cats. I have the last four-they’re deaf. They’re all characters!