That's good to hear. Too bad there aren't more of them. :-(

Everybody is full. There is no room at the inn. And when space opens
socialized cats are the first to fill them because those are the ones
that can be adopted out the quickest so more can be rescued. We had a
terrible kitten season this year because of a mild winter with not a
whole lot of snow and the shelters and animal control were/are
overflowing. The smaller rescues took out as many as they could, but it
didn't make a dent. The flow didn't stop and mothers and entire litters
of kittens have been euthanized regularly non stop.

When you're dealing with this kind of situation, rescues can ill afford
to give space to a cat that may take weeks/months to socialize and
sacrifice *several* cats as a result of not being able to take them, and
many rescues have no resources/experienced people to do this in the
first place. I have a friend that runs a rescue and took a feral into
her program that she herself had trapped. It's been a year and a half
and he is *still* in a foster home, now waiting to be adopted, filling a
space that possibly 20 or more cats could have used. I'm glad he's
there, alive and doing well and don't begrudge him that for a moment. He
deserves to have a happy life as all cats, feral or not, do.

I'm just illustrating the bigger picture, the philosophy of which most
rescues is to save as many lives as they can. Nobody likes or wants to
see cats and dogs rot away at animal control, then be killed because
there is nowhere for them to go. It sucks that rescues are unable at
this time to do more in the area of socializing ferals, but it's,
unfortunately, reality.

I don't ever promote relying on rescues to take care of someone's stray
cat problem anyway. With the vast resources available on the net and in
newsgroups such as this, I would rather see someone that has found an
undersocialized kitten take the responsibility for socializing it and
finding it a home themselves. That relieves the rescues of an extra and
unnecessary burden and the people that take the responsibility for the
cat will have done a really good thing. It's win-win. :-)

Megan

                                   

I realize it doesn't exist everywhere,

It depends on the time of year.  I have a semi-socialized young cat
who when I trapped her it was along with a bunch of older cats who I
intented to trap, neuter, release.  At the time that I trapped her,
she was too young to release but none of the groups around here would
take her so I had the moral decision to either release her or have her
vaccinated for FeLV and pray for her health and keep her.  I have a
FeLV+ cat, and another who also has to be vaccinated yearly (the
positive cat became positive at 10 years of age from a transfusion).
If I had turned her "over" to the shelter she would have been killed.
She is solid black and there are too many black cats here and no one
wants black cats for some reason.

If she wasn't trapped in May, but maybe in November, a feral group may
have taken her.

After posting my previous message I did more research on declawing.  After
reading more and more about declawing, I couldn't in good conscious do this.
I really never gave this a second thought until a poster here mentioned how
cruel and inhumane the procedure is.  I have a brother and sister who have
purebred cats and they had to sign a form saying they would not mutilate
(declaw) the cats. My sister has leather furniture and her cat loved
scratching it.  She now takes it to a vet and has these caps put on the
claws.  I think the caps last about a month.  Has anyone had any experience
with these caps or soft paws?

news:epxRkhlUwRo0-pn2-2MbM0TebJ0YC@dialup-63.208.207.122.Dial1.Tampa1.Level3.net...

Curtis wrote:

It will adapt to indoor life just fine. Without exception, every feral I
have taken in has.

One thing you should be aware of is that the cat may not know what the
litterbox is for. This is easy to remedy. Get two boxes and put dirt
from your yard in one of them. Hopefully the cat will use the reglar
litter and this won't be an issue, but if it takes a little bit to
figure it out it will use the dirt in the second box. You can start
adding regular litter to the dirt and gradually switch to just litter
over a few days time.

Don't pet the kitty if it bites. It wouldn't hurt to run over to
Menard's and buy a pair of their welding gloves to wear until you can
redirect the cat's biting to something else(they are blue suede and cost
about $5) Get a small stuffed animal and let kitty bite that or distract
it with a feather wand or something similar. This is how young cats play
and since ths one doesn't have another cat to roughhouse with you are
the next best thing. Don't react to the cat with anything negative, just
redirect it's attention to an appropriate item.

Kitty will. Get the cat used to having its claws trimmed. Keeping them
short pretty much eliminates any damage they can do. Make sure to choose
scratching posts it likes. Cardbard scratchers are heap popular and it
would be wise for you to get the cat a floor to ceiling cat tree too.
You can see a picture of one as well as an excellent scratching post
available at Petsmart here:
http://community.webtv.net/zuzu22/scratch
Placement of the posts are important and should be close to where kitty
spends a lot of time. The entryway to a room where kitty spends a lot of
time is another good place for a post. I have one right by the doorway
to my bedroom and the first thing the cats do when they come in is
scratch it. :-)
I have never had any of my ferals even look sideways at the furniture.
They use the cat trees and posts exclusively for all their scratching.

It *is* inhumane and that is why it is considered animal cruelty and
banned or illegal in most of the world. Most American vets that do this
horrific thing to cats are more interested in making money off of the
procedure rather than educating clients on how to train their cats,
which is VERY easy. Give the cat something *of its own* with a surface
that it likes to scratch, place it in a good location and you won't have
any problems.

It's NOT rare. Ask anyone who has worked as a vet tech or in a shelter
for any length of time. Behavior problems are generally not reported to
vets because the majority of people that declaw are ignorant as to what
the procedure is and don't understand that the declawing is the reason
Fluffly starts biting because she has no other defense or refuses to use
the litterbox because she has suffered excruciating pain and it hurts
her poor little mutilated paws to dig in the litter.

I really doubt that will be an issue. :-)

Especially if it's a girl as you will have a pregnant cat on your hands
very soon if she is not spayed and left outside. :-(

Megan