I think it all depends on what age they were caught and seperated from their
mother.  I've seen little 3-4 week old bitties hiss, but they come around
much easier with lots of handling.  Kittens caught after 6 weeks take more
time to come around, but they will eventually.  Many times they will stay on
the shy/skittish side.

-Kelly

On Sat 30 Jul 2005 10:14:48a,  wrote in rec.pets.cats.health+behav
(news:1122732888.341079.299630@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com):

Good question Sherry. I wish I knew more about Bonnie's history
before I found her, but she had to have had no contact from humans.
She didn't act like she'd been abused, but just overall in fear of
people - but she was much older than a little kitten. The time I
had to go round up a few litters of kittens in the backyard of an
elderly woman's house, the momcats were definite influences in how
difficult it was to trap/catch them. They were frantically trying
to keep me from getting near the kittens by constant meowing at
them to "come here now".

That's a good question for Megan, actually.

But I'd say not. We get livetrapped kittens in all the time, and most of
them
come around within their 7 day stray period. The percentage rate is higher
for the younger ones, though. Smaller groups usually come around faster,
too. Bigger groups seem like the others reinforce the fear and feral
activity.
MOST of the 'feral' kittens we get in are handleable.

In general, no.  It depends on how early you catch them.  The basic
factor here is that kittens are usually born fearless.  They just
don't know any better.  Fear and caution they learn from their mom.
Thus, there's a big difference between a feral litter born "outside"
and one born in a fostering situation.  

In the latter case, the human contact is earlier, and the earlier the
contact happens, the more easily is the socialization accomplished. In
the former case, one quite often doesn't even get to see the litter
until they've had the benefit of early "training" in a human-free
environment.  It can be overcome, because the kittens are still young,
but even so, it's better that such early training were different.

Yes, there are.  Personality is a factor too.  The assumption isn't
really valid, one has to treat each case on its own terms.  If you saw
my Marie (but ignored her eartip!) you would never believe that she
was a feral for the first five months of her life.  calvin and Katrina
took to human contact readily even though they were about 10 weeks old
when I caught them.  On the other hand, I've seen 6-week old kittens
hiss, scratch and (try to) bite.

What's the real issue here?  Found a kitten from an apparently feral
situation who is too friendly?
 

It depends on two things: how early the kitten was exposed to human contact.
Feral kittens <3 months old are fairly easy to tame and accept human
handling happily.  But the age at which kittens will adapt to human handling
varies among cats.   I have two former ferals that I trapped at 6 and 8
months. Both are completely socialized- although one took a little longer.
The eight-month-old took longer to come around than the six-month old, and
the six-month old took longer than three-month old ferals I've trapped and
socialized.

Another factor is the mother.  The kitten's mother has a strong influence on
her kittens' attitude towards people- a friendly mother is more likely to
have friendly kittens- this is probably a result of learning through
observation rather than genetics.

In my experience, kittens born to feral mothers from a managed colony tend
to be much more friendly and easier to adapt to human contact than feral
kittens born to mothers with no human contact.

The terms 'stray' and 'feral' are not interchangeable.  A friendly feral
kitten could have had a friendly mother and a stray kitten could have had an
unfriendly mother.  In a cases like this it would tough to tell the
difference without knowing the mothers' history.

I'm not sure if I answered your question. ;-/

Phil

I don't have a lot of personal experience with feral cats.  By feral, I mean
cats who have reverted to or are born into a feral condition, which is not
the same as a stray or abandoned housecat who may appear shy or skittish,
but is not as wild as a feral.

You can decide if these were feral cat experiences or not.  I can verify
that they had not been socialized or touched by humans before.

One of my daughters found a litter of kittens a cat delivered in her barn a
couple of summers ago.  I believe I posted about it on this group under a
thread called barn kittens or something like that.

My daughter had never seen the mother cat before, and therefore does not
know her history.  The cat did her best to keep herself and the kittens
hidden.  The kittens were about five or six weeks old when my daughter was
actually able to grab them and bring them inside.  Some were more hissy than
others, but she had them all tame and lovable within a week or so.  The vet
was so impressed when my daughter brought the kittens in for their first
vaccinations that he offered to spay the mother for free.

When my daughter trapped the mother cat, she said the mother cat had "evil
eyes."  She took the cat to the vet for a spay and vaccinations and parasite
treatment and released the cat back to the barn.  While the cat was going
under the anesthesia, she managed to give the vet a nasty bite.
According to the people who adopted the kittens, they all matured into
terrific pets.  The mother cat remained wild.

My personal experience is with Rosie. She was born in our neighborhood and I
got glimpses of her and her siblings and her mother a few times and only
during sunset or sunrise times of day.  I know that Rosie was homeless from
birth and wild.

To make a long story short, I trapped her when she was about seven months
old and took her to the vet.  It turns out that she was pregnant with three
kittens, which did not totally surprise me, but was not known to me
beforehand.  So Rosie was spayed and the kittens aborted as a result.

I was very sad about the kittens, but relieved that I did not have to make
the decision and would have to find homes for additional cats. This is a
difficult conflict for me.

I don't know what happened to the rest of Rosie's family.  I suspect that
coyotes got them and she was the only one left.  She definitely is smart and
resourceful and I think that's why she survived.

Although she was not a young kitten, and untouchable when I trapped her,
Rosie now is totally tame.  It literally took years, but you'd never guess
that she's had such a hard start in life.

Annie