Need Advice - Bad Situation W/ Neighbor & Stray Colony - Long Story

fionasmom

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You really are doing an amazing job with this situtation. Eventually, the colony will stabilize. I, too, have been met with surprise when I told people that I have TNRed cats. Most think it is very "kind" but don't begin to understand how the kitten population can get out of control.
 
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DuranOnasi

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Hello all, thanks for the encouragement and kind words. Been a while since I updated. I've been hyper-focused on capturing the females over the past few months to prevent the population from increasing. I have lured both of them into my yard and paid special attention to one that was pregnant. After several months of trying and many frustrating failed attempts, I finally got her tonight and am taking her to get spayed tomorrow.

It is upsetting to me to have to abort kittens but the alternatives are even worse. Also, the cat that's pregnant is smaller than an adult cat is supposed to be, probably because she had her first litter while she was still a teen, so she stopped growing. Her gestation period seems to have been abnormally long and I feel like there's a high chance that something has gone wrong with her pregnancy or that there would be dangerous or lethal complications if she gave birth. She looks like a soccer ball and her abdomen is rock solid, and I feel no movement inside.

I was able to capture her by ambushing her with an invention of my own design that I made out of cardboard. The ambush was successful because my girlfriend had been feeding the cats for me while I was out of state for medical reasons, and so I was able to sneak up on the pregnant cat while her back was turned to me, which normally, it never was.

Current stats:

4/6 Male adults neutered
1/6 Male kittens neutered (apparently another kitten was born in November)
2/3 Female adults spayed (The total went up by 1 because I'm counting the female that I adopted and spayed when I first moved here)
 

Jcatbird

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Bravo! You have done very, very well! I love it that you invented your own capture gear! :)
It sounds like you might be saving the life of that pregnant Mom. We can only do so much.
Thank you for all your efforts on behalf of these kitties. I wish everyone cared as much! :heartshape:
 
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DuranOnasi

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Thank you Jcatbird. I've tried to explain to friends, family, and neighbors what I'm doing and why, but most of them don't understand.

Here's a schematic of the cardboard invention I made in case it ever helps anyone else who happens to be in the situation of "I need to capture a cat that lets me approach it, but I can't get it into a carrier or trap no matter what I do."

CAT SCHEMATIC.png
 

Jcatbird

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I was awakened very early with my step Mom going to the hospital. A dislocated hip replacement that was, luckily, put back in place but it was a stressful night. Then I decided to quickly check my email. I’m so glad I did! I just love you! I’m am cracking up at this wonderful box trap! You did such a great job! I can’t stop smiling at the thought of you taking the time to work this out. I bet kitty was surprised but not terrified. You had her.
Am I getting it right that the cardboard slips through to trap her and release her? I want to make sure I totally understand this because, with your permission, it should be shared with all the other people who write me all the time, asking...... how can I get this cat? I don’t have a trap and can’t get one. Do you have any idea how many people need what you made to save a kitty? If you get time, please look for other people on this site who need your help. The feral and rescue forum has them all the time.

I must tell you that the part that made me totally crack up was the detail of the water squirt, through the hole to get the cat out again! Brilliant way to move the kitty so it won’t get hurt! I can only imagine how much bumping around that would save the kitty! Instant exit! :lol: You certainly turned my night around.
Simple perfection!
Time for a hero award! :goldstar:
Thank you so much for sharing this. Your family may not understand what you are doing, but we sure do!
I bet they’ll learn, just like mine did. You can start by showing them this post. I think more will follow! :clapcat:
 

Faikey

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I'll explain everything while being as brief as I can.

I bought a house in Florida and as I was shaking hands to close the deal, a cat walked by.
"Do you have any cats? You do now! Hope you like them!" the real estate agent joked.

I do love cats, and I hate to see them suffer, which is why a neighborhood infested with starving stray cats is my worst nightmare.

While I was moving in, a young cat jumped into the back of my moving truck. In the following days she would come running up to me acting friendly, so I fed her. She was so friendly that I was able to just pick her up and put her in a carrier with zero resistance, so I decided to adopt her. I took her to get spayed and her vaccines and found she was pregnant...kittens were aborted. After the spay, she was so skinny from malnutrition that I was amazed she was alive. That cat lives inside with now so she got a happy ending.

After living here for a few months, I learned that there is a colony of fertile stray cats living directly across the street from me. There's an elderly lady that apparently feeds them and allows them to breed on her property.

I caught children throwing rocks at the cats and yelled at them, asking them how they would feel if rocks were thrown at them, and told them to stop.

After a few more months and a few litters of kittens, a couple of the cats started wandering onto my property. They looked extremely hungry - either skin and bones or bloated from parasite infestations. Unable to turn a blind eye to their suffering, I started feeding them with the intention of neutering any cat that comes to me for food.

However, after feeding the two initial cats for about a week in an effort to earn their trust, the rest of the colony realized there was food and came onto my property in a stampede.

This quickly gained the attention of the neighbor who had been feeding the colony. She came across the street and spoke to me:

Her: How many of these cats do you want?

Me: None, I was just trying to help them because they seemed hungry.

Her: Yeah they are hungry huh! They eat too much! It's too expensive! I decided they need to go on a diet so now I don't feed them anymore. Haha!

Me: Well that's no good.

Her: I was gonna take the kittens to the fire station, there's just too many of them.

Me: There are free spay and neuter programs offered by the county.

Her: No, I don't mess with that.

Me: I can take the cats in for you if you want. That way they'll stop breeding.

Her: No, I don't do that. That's unnatural, it's not "God's Plan". Besides, I love having the little kittens running around. They're so cute. I've loved cats all my life.

Me: Uh...

Her: The neighbors, they think these cats belong to me, and I tell them, they're not my cats! I just feed them! But they complain about cats coming in their yard. So I told them, 'If you don't want the cats coming in your yard, throw rocks at them and they'll stay out'! Haha!

Me: Ok. How about I take them to a vet to get them vaccinated for you at least?

Her: No no no, they don't need any vaccines. I never let these cats inside my house. They're outside cats only.

Me: The vaccines are to protect the cats, not y-

Her: That's alright. Listen, what happened to that brown and gray cat that used to go in your yard?

Me: I adopted her, she lives inside my house now. She's doing fine.

Her: Oh yeah, she's in there? Alright. Anyway you have a nice day.

After this..."conversation", I realized that communication is pointless, but since she claims the cats "don't belong to her", she should have no problem with me undertaking a TNR mission with them.

So I continued feeding the cats, luring more and more of them into my yard and earning their trust. I believe there is an average of 10 cats that swarm my front door whenever I go outside or come home from somewhere now.

I know that it looks bad. The other residents on my side of the street are glaring at me with open hostility and judgment when I go out to feed them. One came up to me and asked me why I was feeding all of these cats. I said "because I don't want to let them starve. They came from across the street."

Most of them trust me enough to let me pet them now, and they seem friendly enough (with me at least, since I'm their food source) to be adoptable, theoretically. Unfortunately, I haven't taken them to get neutered and spayed yet, because the clinic that accepts strays/ferals lost its vet and was shut down for nearly two months. They just recently reopened.

Here's where my problem starts. I took stock of all the cats coming into my yard and figured out how many males and females there are.

5 Male adults
4 Male kittens
1 Female kitten (teen? could be in early stages of pregnancy or have worms?)
0 Female adults

I thought, 'Where are the kittens coming from if there are no adult females'?

Well, after keeping an eye out I found them...across the street...with the neighbor. Two or three adult females (hard to tell from a distance). She apparently feeds these females regularly enough that they never come into my yard, even though they know there's food (have seen them watching from a distance). And of course, they're pregnant. Again.

Also, all these non-vaccinated cats in one area was just begging for a disease outbreak, which is what happened. Some highly infectious disease hit all of the cats, causing them to sneeze and have oozing red eyes. Most have recovered so it doesn't seem to be fatal, but it was especially sad to see the kittens in that state.

One good thing is that I haven't seen any dead cats in the road, which is what I feared with all the crossing the street between the neighbor's house and mine. Have seen several near misses. Sadly one of the kittens (now approaching a teen) now appears to have broken hips, or a broken leg. It can walk and eat and even move quickly when threatened, but it walks very awkwardly and doesn't seem to want to put any weight on its legs at all.

I thought I had a solid plan of action - TNR all the cats, colony stabilizes, no more starving cats or dead kittens, life is good. But I feel like my discovery that the neighbor is intentionally feeding pregnant females in her yard and refuses to spay them has ruined my plan.

One more piece of information...I already own two cats, so I can't use the inside of my house as a staging ground without spreading the disease to them.

Now I don't know what to do and I'm starting to panic. The cat situation is overwhelming me and affecting the mental health of both me and the people that I live with. It's making me feel like a prisoner in my own home - when I go outside, I get swarmed by cats and glared at by humans, so now I tend to stay inside whenever possible.

Reasoning with, threatening, or confronting the neighbor is not an option, and calling animal control, the city, or making a big deal with an activist group is not an option either. I live in what is commonly referred to as a "bad neighborhood" and I will not do anything that has any possibility of putting me or my family in the crosshairs of retaliation or retribution.

After sitting down and thinking for a while, the conclusion I came to was:

"I can't stop this colony from breeding because the pregnant females won't come in my yard. Meanwhile, feeding the cats that do come on my property without neutering and vaccinating them just makes me as bad as the neighbor. "

So from now on, I will
1) Every week, take as many cats as possible to get neutered
2) Only feed those cats that are neutered or will be neutered in the near future
3) Only feed the cats in a private location, out of sight from other cats and neighbors
4) Do not feed any additional cats that are bred and born across the street
5) Turn my brain off and stop caring/looking at/thinking about about the horrible breeding/starvation cycle going on across the street, because there's nothing I can do to stop it.

This isn't the outcome I was hoping for but I'm out of ideas.

I stumbled across this forum while trying to help my father with an unrelated issue (how to capture a violent cat in a carrier) and decided it was worth a shot to make this post.

If you've read all this, thank you for reading and please respond with any thoughts, opinions, or advice you may have. Thank you.
I had a feral cat colony as well very similar to your story. Most were females. I was able to rescue abandoned litters with some success (like literally abandoned with dead kitten bodies near the live ones). They also spread an awful cold to all the cats including my indoor cats who never physically interacted with them. I adopted one of the kittens because the mom stopped cleaning his eyes and he couldnt even see at all. I act thought his eyes were gone because of the amount of pus over them. When I picked him up and wiped him down he looked at me and immediately followed me up my apartment and thought I was his new mom. Very young cat. Bad infection too, hes super uncoordinated (it's been 8 years so nothing serious) and fail jumps constantly. I fed the colony every day morning and night for 2 years. Unfortunately even though I interacted with the kittens while they ate and they ran to my car to greet me, they wouldn't come inside unless the door just stayed open or they flipped.

I didnt care what my neighbors thought. My neighbor only left a note on my door asking if I could feed them a little lower on the steps because when he came out of his apartment they would jump off the second floor haha.

I think I picked up a total of 3 cats there and got them a vaccinated.

One time 4 kittens of a new litter went under my neighbor's car and went on a trip to the bank. He called me and told me that the 4 kittens were now at the bank and he was unable to capture them to return then to their mom. I told my manager immediately I had to go get the kittens and I was able to retrieve all of them and bring them back, kept one that needed some help too.


I know you're in a difficult position and I've lived in bad areas for a while where colonies were rampant. However all my cats were ferals or stray kittens and I've had about 10 and was able to successfully adopt out 4 of them.

Below is one that was captured who simply has psoriasis that I'm currently fostering who was originally a feral.

My colonies mostly had one dominant black Male cat who was getting all the cats pregnant.

And like I said my cats were all vaccinated and never let out but they still got the gooey cold sickness just from me walking outside and back which the vet told me is enough even if I dont touch them at all. Nothing you can do can prevent it. So i wouldn't beat yourself up

Hopefully you keep caring for them and work with capture and neuter places in your area. My area had a ton of resources and offered free vaccines and spaying and neutering
 

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kittyluv387

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Hello all, thanks for the encouragement and kind words. Been a while since I updated. I've been hyper-focused on capturing the females over the past few months to prevent the population from increasing. I have lured both of them into my yard and paid special attention to one that was pregnant. After several months of trying and many frustrating failed attempts, I finally got her tonight and am taking her to get spayed tomorrow.

It is upsetting to me to have to abort kittens but the alternatives are even worse. Also, the cat that's pregnant is smaller than an adult cat is supposed to be, probably because she had her first litter while she was still a teen, so she stopped growing. Her gestation period seems to have been abnormally long and I feel like there's a high chance that something has gone wrong with her pregnancy or that there would be dangerous or lethal complications if she gave birth. She looks like a soccer ball and her abdomen is rock solid, and I feel no movement inside.

I was able to capture her by ambushing her with an invention of my own design that I made out of cardboard. The ambush was successful because my girlfriend had been feeding the cats for me while I was out of state for medical reasons, and so I was able to sneak up on the pregnant cat while her back was turned to me, which normally, it never was.

Current stats:

4/6 Male adults neutered
1/6 Male kittens neutered (apparently another kitten was born in November)
2/3 Female adults spayed (The total went up by 1 because I'm counting the female that I adopted and spayed when I first moved here)
Congratulations on getting that one female spayes! Are you able to lure the last one to your place at all?
 
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DuranOnasi

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Faikey Faikey thanks for sharing your story, sounds like a great success. I should be grateful that the cats I'm dealing with are almost all orange which has turned females into rarities. If it were a 50/50 gender ratio the situation would be much harder.

kittyluv387 kittyluv387 The last female has started coming to my place to eat but she hasn't shown up lately. I think she's more active in the morning/afternoon so I'll figure out her schedule and get her soon hopefully.

Furballsmom Furballsmom thanks *thumbs up*

Jcatbird Jcatbird I'm glad the water squirt idea was brightened your day, it's pretty effective and harmless. My cardboard invention actually only needs one slot cut in it to function, the slot on the other side isn't required. And yeah, the idea can definitely be used as a makeshift substitute carrier for those who can't afford one if you instead use a box with a bottom that has enough air holes. Just let the cat walk into the box, then close the door.

But what I designed this thing for was the case of a cat that refuses to go into a box, trap, or carrier under any circumstance: you just drop the bottomless box on top of her, hold it down, and have someone else snugly connect the entrance of the cardboard box to the entrance of the cat trap/carrier. The openings should be similarly sized. Then you pull the tab to expose the entrance of the cardboard box, and when she moves from the box into the trap/carrier you quickly pull the box out of the way and close the door to the trap/carrier. It's definitely a two person job

Here are some pictures I took. I can't show how the trap connected to it because the trap & the cat are still at the vet.
 

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Faikey

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This will be a funny but I swear a strangely effective trap. It's the ol' fishline and stick with a small crate that releases downwards. Put a stick or something to hook the thing so its forced up, put a bunch of cat food, wet food, other fun stuff in there like temptation treats (cats love these) get a rope and tie it to holding rod. Pull. You can get a bigger crate and feed your colony in it and then release the latch. I used to do this to catch like quails for pets lol.
 

Jcatbird

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Faikey Faikey thanks for sharing your story, sounds like a great success. I should be grateful that the cats I'm dealing with are almost all orange which has turned females into rarities. If it were a 50/50 gender ratio the situation would be much harder.

kittyluv387 kittyluv387 The last female has started coming to my place to eat but she hasn't shown up lately. I think she's more active in the morning/afternoon so I'll figure out her schedule and get her soon hopefully.

Furballsmom Furballsmom thanks *thumbs up*

Jcatbird Jcatbird I'm glad the water squirt idea was brightened your day, it's pretty effective and harmless. My cardboard invention actually only needs one slot cut in it to function, the slot on the other side isn't required. And yeah, the idea can definitely be used as a makeshift substitute carrier for those who can't afford one if you instead use a box with a bottom that has enough air holes. Just let the cat walk into the box, then close the door.

But what I designed this thing for was the case of a cat that refuses to go into a box, trap, or carrier under any circumstance: you just drop the bottomless box on top of her, hold it down, and have someone else snugly connect the entrance of the cardboard box to the entrance of the cat trap/carrier. The openings should be similarly sized. Then you pull the tab to expose the entrance of the cardboard box, and when she moves from the box into the trap/carrier you quickly pull the box out of the way and close the door to the trap/carrier. It's definitely a two person job

Here are some pictures I took. I can't show how the trap connected to it because the trap & the cat are still at the vet.
I can see it would work for a carrier too! Excellent!
I love, love the photos! Those are such beautiful
Kitties! They are very lucky to have you.we need more like you!:yess:
 

Faikey

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I can see it would work for a carrier too! Excellent!
I love, love the photos! Those are such beautiful
Kitties! They are very lucky to have you.we need more like you!:yess:

I only suggested a large dog crate to capture multiple cats at once. You could just feed them in it for a few days until they trust it and bam you got your colony. The box trap is amazing but I would be worried of it's long term effectiveness. If the colony sees you immediately doing this as a member of their colony meows and panics to get our of the box it could make the colony completely weary. I've also dealt with cats who were able to break open traditional cat crates.
 

fionasmom

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You have done an incredible job! I agree that something might be wrong with the young pregnant female. Years ago I lost a very feral mother and all kittens to a final and complicated pregnancy. The only completely untrappable cat I have ever faced and I even hired a professional to try to help.
 
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