We managed to trap a feral mom and her 3 kittens a couple of weeks ago that were living under our deck for a couple a weeks before then. My guess is the kittens are at least 8 weeks to 10 weeks in age. The Best Friends Animal Society paid to have them Spayed and neutered all has gone according to plan but we have hit a bump in the road. We have the kittens in a bed room and the mother in our closed in porch. We are waiting for the weather to warm some and give the mother time to heal, our plan is to release her tomorrow. We hope she sticks around, we built a small shelter for her with a indoor/outdoor heating pad.
The Kittens are the issue. All three are at various states of tameness. One enjoys being held and purrs when we hold her. The other is just starting to let us touch her when she eats and plays with us with a string. The third is the real problem. It is very frightened. It is difficult to get her to even come out of hiding to eat when we are in the room. The other issue is we have the under bed space blocked off but she keeps managing to find her way back under, then the others follow. This sets us back days because the whole process of getting them out is very traumatic for all.
We have been reluctant to remove the friendly one from the pack because he has been a positive influence on getting the others comfortable with us but we also feel they have been a negative influence on him when he sees how frightened they are of us.
My questions:
Should we remove the tame kitten from the situation?
Should we move the two kittens in a dog crate to force more contact with us but not allowing them to run and hide? or is a larger room better?
Are the kittens able to be tamed?
Should we release the two other kittens back outside with the mother?
Both my wife and I work demanding jobs and this whole ordeal has been very stressful on us and our house cats. We are hoping to at least get the two difficult kitties to a point where we could get them into an adoption clinic but it looks to be a lot harder than we anticipated.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The Kittens are the issue. All three are at various states of tameness. One enjoys being held and purrs when we hold her. The other is just starting to let us touch her when she eats and plays with us with a string. The third is the real problem. It is very frightened. It is difficult to get her to even come out of hiding to eat when we are in the room. The other issue is we have the under bed space blocked off but she keeps managing to find her way back under, then the others follow. This sets us back days because the whole process of getting them out is very traumatic for all.
We have been reluctant to remove the friendly one from the pack because he has been a positive influence on getting the others comfortable with us but we also feel they have been a negative influence on him when he sees how frightened they are of us.
My questions:
Should we remove the tame kitten from the situation?
Should we move the two kittens in a dog crate to force more contact with us but not allowing them to run and hide? or is a larger room better?
Are the kittens able to be tamed?
Should we release the two other kittens back outside with the mother?
Both my wife and I work demanding jobs and this whole ordeal has been very stressful on us and our house cats. We are hoping to at least get the two difficult kitties to a point where we could get them into an adoption clinic but it looks to be a lot harder than we anticipated.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.