Advice on a 10+ year old feral kitty currently in my spare bedroom

[shadowsrescue]

She's still eating. It's normal to slow down a bit. I would leave out dry food 24/7 for right now. Then bring in wet food 2x a day and pick it up if she doesn't eat it within 90 minutes. You don't want it sitting there and spoiling.

She is still adjusting to inside living. All of the sights, smells and sounds are all new. When I brought my feral boys inside, sometimes they would hide for 24 hours. Noises in the house were very strange to them. Each day was something new. Try to visit her often and assure her she is safe and loved.

As for thinking she isn't eating and needs back out, that would be in an extreme case. I mean like she doesn't eat anything at all for 3 days. She is eating just less. She doesn't need as many calories inside as she doesn't expend energy trying to stay warm.

 

[fionasmom]

I am just going to add some various comments to the excellent advice you have received. I have only ever had former ferals as pets, indoor only. The last rescue was in January, a 5 1/2 year old TNRed female, who had been living in an alley near some apartments for what was probably her entire life. She was an emergency rescue after someone made an attempt on her life and I had no indication of how she would be in a house, or even confined initially to a room. She has gone from bathroom, to sleeping on the big bed in the adjoining bedroom, to demanding to be brushed each morning once she realized that if she allowed brushing the hideous mats would go away.

If your girl is not jumping out the window, it is because she does not want to leave, so yes, close the window. As a counterpoint to this, I have had ferals break out of windows if they wanted to, and I mean screened windows which were only slightly raised and required quite a lot of machination on their parts to get out.

You have not had this cat for long, so there has been no time to really evaluate her or to see a change in her behavior. In her cat mind, she may be thinking that this is heaven and she has just found it after all this time.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

The amount you are describing her eating is not so slight as to be worrying. She may be simply realizing that the food will be here, and there is no need to gorge anymore. IF she stops eating entirely, you would want to have the vet see her by the end of the third day, or beginning of the fourth, just to make sure she hasn't been incubating an illness. If everything was normal, that would be the time to make a determination about putting her back outside.

AND THAT SAID...everything else you are describing makes me feel as if this girl wants to be inside. She just has to find her way.

 

[Meowmee]

I posted about this over in Jcatbird's ferals and rescued thread, and so as not to highjack that thread I'm creating my own. I was wondering if it was worth it to try to socialize an old, possibly even elderly feral?

We've been feeding her for around 10 years, and she was an adult when we started feeding her. She would let us get to within a foot or two of her when feeding, but was always SUPER wary and we never attempted to pet her.

We caught her on Friday of last week and had a vet see her for what turned out to be a nasty ear infection. I've been thinking for years that I'd like to try moving her inside or see if she could be an indoor/outdoor kitty. It's really cold here in the winter and she won't use any shelters I put out for her.

At any rate, she's been in a spare bedroom since Friday. As with all things, the internet is full of wildly conflicting advice. I fluctuate between thinking I can surely socialize her and feeling like a monster for keeping her cooped up in a room.

She will eat, sleep and use the bathroom in my presence, but has no interest in approaching me or interacting with me. I'm of course following advice on socializing her slowly.

I'm wondering if this means anything, or if this is just anthropomorphizing: since Friday, we've left a window in her room open wide enough for her to get out, for about an hour each day. It's really cold out and probably drafty on the floor where she's been hanging out, so I close it after that. The first few times, I opened a window over a desk at the opposite side of the small room she's in--yesterday, I opened the window next to the bed, on the same wall she's been hiding against (she has also sometimes been up on the nightstand looking out this window when I come in). She didn't leave any of these times, obviously, or I wouldn't be asking this question! I have a camera in the room, and she did not go up to the window to investigate.

So, my question is--does this mean she's too oblivious or scared to investigate? Or that she doesn't want to leave? I realize that no one here can truly answer that question, but I'm somewhat desperate for advice on the right thing to do for her. She's a super wily, savvy cat--I can't imagine she wouldn't smell the fresh air and at least check it out to see if it offered an escape. A complicating factor is that on a couple of other occasions I cracked the window or kept the screen down so she couldn't escape those times if she wanted to.

It's impossible to know what she's thinking--does she feel trapped and depressed? Does she realize it's cold out and is grateful to be inside?

I guess the way to find out for certain would be to leave the window open all night, but aside from the safety implications and the cold, I really don't want her to leave!

Ultimately, I'd be happy with having her as a standoffish member of the household--just give her a warm place to sleep. I'd be ok with her coming and going if she likes. She's clearly smart enough to have survived outside for this long. We have two other cats, both around 4-6 years old. One of them is a stray that our neighbor abandoned, and we took in. We believe he and the feral kitty are friends, as they would sometimes sit or lie in the yard close to each other in a relaxed way before we took him in.

Thanks for reading, and any advice would be gratefully received.

Picture of the kitty below, from when she was at the vet Friday.
View attachment 436396

I would just keep her inside. I think she will adjust in time. There may be some truly Feral Cats that would prefer to live outside in the shelters but I think many could adjust.

I have taken in Fred- it’s been about six months now, he’s only really just starting to adjust a bit. He is very scared of people. I don’t touch him at all but he interacts with my other cats… most were outside at first, Merlin came in in 2019 and Zena came inside last December.
There is one more, Fred’s buddy Cinnamon, and then my whole colony either passed away or came inside.

Just now we had a major breakthrough- I’m getting ready to sleep, reading, Zena came in and jumped on the bed with me and Fred yowled a bit and then came in through the cat door… when I looked at him he ran back out and the door fell off. Then what he does is he looks in through the hole in the door lol.

He came back in, and then he and zena were grooming themselves and he was looking at the bed like he would like to join zena…he also looked at me and meowed etc. Merlin looked in too, and eventually Fred ran back outand I heard him or someone chasing him down the hallway.

This was a very long process which started out with him first being trapped because he was limping, taken to DVM and then isolating in the drop trap for 3 to 4 weeks then in the open bedroom he has spent most of his time hiding behind the bed in the master bedroom and he will still run away from me if I come in but if I’m just sitting in the bed now like I was now in my own room and I don’t make any sudden moves he felt safe enough to come in here and interact… this is the first time he’s actually come in and done that while I was in here but I suspect sometimes when I leave the door open when I go out for a while they may have been interacting in this way before.

It has taken about six months to get to this point, it’s kind of different for each cat, you just never know how they will be but I’m sure she will be much happier and safer being warm and inside with you and your cats, so thank you for saving her and I hope things work out well.
Really Fred’s journey started all the way back in 2015 and I have no knowledge about how he ended up outside, obviously he was dumped as are all of the cats so I rescued. Either that or he was born outside but he doesn’t seem like a true feral to me.

Zena now when I go to sleep starts meowing at Fred’s door because he wants to either go in or for Fred to come out and be with him wherever he is.

I’m a bit worried about what will happen when I take cinnamon inside. I’m most worried about just becoming overwhelmed with too many cats and about my Quinn who is always going to be cat number one- I don’t want him to feel neglected and over ridden with all of these cats. He’s a very bossy and a super smart Siamese, very strong-willed, and he wants to dominate everybody. And I don’t want pee/ poop behavior issues.

Merlin, Zena and Quinn are friends with cinnamon through the door though, they will say hi to each other through the screen when I feed cinnamon. So I’m hoping it will work out OK.
But each time you add another cat in it becomes a whole different situation. I can tell cinnamon really wants to come inside and be with the cats but again he’s very scared of me- if I put the food out close to the door he moves back quite a bit, if it is just the cats there he is OK. I was hoping I could get him inside without trapping him and I tried putting the carrier out with some food in it about 3 to 4 weeks ago but he ran away and wouldn’t eat at all. Right now it’s very cold and he’s sleeping in one of the shelters I built which has a heater in it and straw. He and Fred used to snuggle in that one together when it was really cold.
I first tnr these guys in about 2015 I think- I just never imagined one day Fred would be sitting in my room. Although when I first saw him I thought he would be my next cat. He was very standoffish and hissed at me if I walked past him on the path and I kind of gave up. Sybil was still alive then, and she used to chase him away from the front by jumping at him at the window when he was eating. He was always hanging around, so I just thought he would be the next one to come in after Wizard passed away.

I think I actually tnred cinnamon and little cat first and at some point Fred and cinnamon became best buddies, by that point Giorgio who been around before everybody else came and was eating when I first started feeding little cat. I don’t know what happened to her, I am sure she has passed away. I kept little cat inside for about two weeks when she was TNR, but she had already been spayed, I was trying to tame her but I really could not have kept her then so I would’ve had to find a home because Wizard had just become ill at the time and it was too much.

But now I wish I had tried harder. I decided she wasn’t going to be happy inside and I let her back outside. Then I didn’t see her for about a year and then one day I saw her eating again on the patio. I took a photo of her and a video, and then I never saw her again after that.

Looking back at all of this now I realize that two weeks was in no way any amount of time to tell whether a cat could adjust to being inside. It can take months for them to fully adjust or years. I remember one of my doctors telling me he had adopted a cat and she would not let them touch her for about three or four years and then all of a sudden she became touchable. This was not a cat who had been outside for years, she was adopted through a rescue.

Giorgio and Jezebel I tried to save when they became ill but they died- it was very painful to see that. Georgio became touchable outside and I think he would’ve been tamer inside if he had lived. Jezebel was very skittish, I don’t really know if she would’ve ever been touchable, but I think she was happy being inside too.

 

[hexiesfriend]

I rescued a momma cat from my workplace and she went on to live a wonderful life in my garage and in my house when I wasn’t home, this went on for 10 years! She never warmed to me but became best friends with my cat. The first I was able to pet her was in her last days when she could not fight me. I would like to think she was purring because she loved my petting. She was still my baby although it didn’t pan out for a close relationship. You are doing the right thing!