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.