Relocating a feral

[moxiewild]

Hello everyone!

I’ve relocated a lot of colonies before, but I’ve always had an outbuilding, kennel, etc to do so at other people’s properties.

Tonight my boyfriend’s coworker trapped a feral cat at her barn:

(Sorry for the low quality, it’s a screen shot from the low res video she sent me)

We have an open appointment this week at the s/n clinic, so I offered to take the cat and pay for surgery and vaccinations for her.

However, her boyfriend wants it “gone” because he hates cats, blah blah blah, you know the drill.

I’m still trying to get her to try and convince him otherwise. Cats are great pest control and deterrent, especially at a barn. If there’s one, there’s almost certainly more, and if there’s not currently more cats, there will be, because it’s a barn. Explained the vacuum effect, etc etc. Again - y’all know the drill.

She seems very open to keeping the cat (not necessarily caring for it, but allowing it to live there) but isn’t very motivated to convince her boyfriend.

I’m hoping he’ll be there when I pick up the cat tomorrow so that I can talk to him myself, and I’m going to continue working on them until it’s time to release the cat after surgery.

But I need a back up plan. We can take the cat, but I need to figure out some logistics here.

We don’t have any out buildings, and our yard is horribly sloped, so a kennel won’t work.

We have a small bathroom we could use for as long as needed, I’m just not sure how well that works with ferals when it comes time to release kitty outside.

Has anyone done a relocation with a true feral this way? Keeping them inside the 3+ weeks and then releasing them outside when they’ve never seen that particular territory before?

As many of you know, we also have one of our colonies at the house too. You might also recall, our house colony doesn’t get along and there’s some fighting.

So I have additional concerns over whether they will chase this cat off, or if this cat will be put off due to the existence of an established colony regardless. Especially without any sort of introduction (ideally, we would have been able to contain kitty outside for this).

Anyway, that’s the situation, so any advice or encouragement would be appreciated!

 

[di and bob]

I have heard of people using a rabbit hutch outside to get a feral situated to a new location or one of those chicken coops. I got a fairly large chicken wire one online for a couple of hundred bucks and used that. I don't think keeping one inside would work, they need to see and get used to the outside. I really hope you can talk the boyfriend into allowing the cat to stay there. Maybe inform him on how destructive mice and ground squirrels can be. They even chew through electrical wires in a car!

 

[fionasmom]

I am sorry that you got into this situation. Using an outdoor enclosure of some kind would probably be best so that the cat becomes accustomed to the territory that will be their new home. Yes, I have seen established colonies drive off newcomers. This is unpredictable and even though you are highly responsible, some of it is out of your hands.

 

[CatladyJan]

Based on what you've said about the couple I wouldn't want them to keep the cat.

 

[moxiewild]

I have heard of people using a rabbit hutch outside to get a feral situated to a new location or one of those chicken coops. I got a fairly large chicken wire one online for a couple of hundred bucks and used that. I don't think keeping one inside would work, they need to see and get used to the outside. I really hope you can talk the boyfriend into allowing the cat to stay there. Maybe inform him on how destructive mice and ground squirrels can be. They even chew through electrical wires in a car!

We did think of placing an extra large wire dog crate outside - the thing is, we have a lot of wildlife activity here right now.

On top of it being the beginning of baby season, we’re often feeding them “decoy food” in the backyard to keep them away from the traps for the cats up front.

So my concern is the stress of the gaze of raccoons, the opossums, and occasional fox coming around all night, not to mention all the colony cats.

I wouldn’t be as concerned if it was a large kennel where he could maintain a decent amount of space between himself and them as needed, but a mini coop/rabbit hutch/dog crate only allows him ~2-3 feet of space he can put between them when they inevitably come to check him out.

I do want him to acclimate to this sort of activity, but it’s hard to find a balance between getting him acclimated and managing his stress levels

 

[moxiewild]

Based on what you've said about the couple I wouldn't want them to keep the cat.

I mean, they wouldn’t be “keeping” him, they’d just be allowing him to live on/around the property.

It’s definitely not ideal, but it’s just inevitable they are going to have more cats, so I’d rather try and set a precedent of them trapping the cats, us getting them neutered, and then them allowing the cats to be returned, as opposed to expecting us to take in all of the cats - or worse, dumping them somewor turning them into the shelter for euthanasia.

We’d take them all if we could, but we already care for over 50 cats at the moment and we’re starting to work on applying for nonprofit status, so our hands are kind of full right now.

With all that in mind, the best compromise would be if we could convince them to simply allow the cat(s) to live on the property in exchange for pest control.

 

[moxiewild]

Okay, so we talked about it some more and I think we have a plan - not sure why we didn’t think it before, because it seems soooo obvious now!

We’ve decided that the best option would be to enclose our porch with hardware cloth -

Most of it should be simple since the porch already has a roof and posts, we’d mainly just have to figure out framing and especially how to build a door/door frame. We’ve never done anything like this before, but we’ve been wanting to make a simple catio there for a while now anyway.

So I think the plan will be to keep kitty crated indoors until we can build the catio. Once on the patio, this should give him enough space to move away from other creatures to reasonably manage stress caused by their presence, I believe. We won’t start the official containment period until he’s on the porch.

Right now I’m only worried about how difficult it will be for us to frame out and build a door as total novices!

And, a bit of good unexpected news!

Three of our regular colony cats seem to be becoming friends!!!

(The Darkness, Bullseye, and Domino)

I can’t describe how incredible that photo is! We’ve been taking care of these ~14 cats for around three years and we have never seen any them hang out together aside from one pair.

They mostly all fight (like… seriously fight) if they run into one another. They never hang out at our house/in our yard or use our shelters - they simply come to eat one-by-one and then leave.

But the other day my boyfriend snapped the picture above of three of them not only hanging out, but doing so IN our yard!!!

Even more impressive is that the group includes Domino (black and white kitty) who is actually still unneutered but seems to be getting on with them well.

I thought it was maybe a fluke, but then this happened two days ago in our garage feeding station (please ignore the chaos in the background, I had been spray painting some shelters to camouflage them better for one of our other colonies!) -


I was so excited because I just happened to catch The Darkness and Domino hanging out again, and just as I started recording, Bullseye’s majestic floofy butt walks into frame! And everyone looks relaxed and content around each other!

We’ll see how this plays out with this new cat. It might mean they’re more likely to gang up on him now

But given that Domino is rather new to the colony and seems to be getting along well with the others despite still being unneutered, I’m hoping this recent friendship is a sign that Domino is more of an “ambassador cat” who can help bring some harmony and acceptance into the colony, especially with this new cat.

We’ll make sure to get the two new boys (Domino and another little guy named Big Mac) neutered a few weeks before we’ll be due to introduce/release this newer guy into the colony to hopefully improve our chances that things will go smoothly.

I was also thinking that when it’s time to release him, we can add a microchip cat door for the porch - that way he will have a safe and familiar area to retreat to as he settles in with the other cats.

Anyway, I know there are lots of tutorials online, but if anyone has any specific advice or resources to turn our porch into a catio/build and frame a door, I would certainly welcome any help!

 

[CatladyJan]

I mean, they wouldn’t be “keeping” him, they’d just be allowing him to live on/around the property.

It’s definitely not ideal, but it’s just inevitable they are going to have more cats, so I’d rather try and set a precedent of them trapping the cats, us getting them neutered, and then them allowing the cats to be returned, as opposed to expecting us to take in all of the cats - or worse, dumping them somewor turning them into the shelter for euthanasia.

We’d take them all if we could, but we already care for over 50 cats at the moment and we’re starting to work on applying for nonprofit status, so our hands are kind of full right now.

With all that in mind, the best compromise would be if we could convince them to simply allow the cat(s) to live on the property in exchange for pest control.

Oh I understand it's just obvious they aren't that into cats.

 

[fionasmom]

That is a lovely patio and back yard area. Your idea is really a good one and I am sure is doable. Unfortunately, I am lucky to be able to work a light switch, so I can't tell you how to go about this. Is there a local handyman who could give you pointers? I realize you don't want to pay some bill to someone for doing this for you if you can do it yourselves. It might only be a matter of having some information which would be helpful.

I have seen cats get along for various reasons. While I don't have 50 ferals.....and, yes, you should get a non profit license....I do have only one female, who is the very feral sister of my avatar, and 5 males. The males don't like each other, but over time they came to some sort of "understanding" about where their food dish would be placed, how they would have to behave if they wanted to eat, etc. In the early morning I often find all of them sitting in the back, spaced out, but all waiting patiently for breakfast.

I do still agree with you that if these people would allow the cats to live as barn cats the problem would be solved.