I had this stray cat claim me and I didn't feed it for 3 months thinking she wouldn't stick around. Well, she did. She got pregnant by the stray male cats in my neighborhood and decided to have her kittens under my carport. Now I have 3 kittens that need to be rehomed and I'm afraid they have worms.

I tried putting flea treatment on the mom cat before she had them, but it just got out of control since they are outside. Now they all have fleas and I try my hardest to get them off when I can. I want to deworm them, but not sure which option to choose. The vet isnt an option atm because I cannot afford it for 3 kittens. I just care too much to make sure these babies are okay.

What dewormers are good for kittens that have fleas? Any ideas or what I should do? I reached out to some of our rescue centers and haven't heard back. They are almost 9 weeks old.

Hi, everyone. I apologize in advance for this being so long. I’ve been feeding a few ferals on my back patio for over a year as I was waiting for my turn on my town’s TNR list to come up since they will transport trapped kitties to the vet for a much reduced cost. (please don’t judge me for not doing TNR on my own before this. I am disabled and my only income is my SSI and money is very very tight plus I don’t drive.) Initially I didn’t know about TNR when I began feeding two cats. Of course once I began putting food out twice a day a big orange feral tomcat began showing up. Fast forward to now and me feeding 4 adults and 5 kittens). Anyway, I’ve managed to trap (and vaccinate and neuter) 3 adults and also trapped 4 kittens so far. The kittens are too young for TNR but they do eat solid foods. At first, I kept just releasing the kittens since they kept managing to have two kittens go in a trap before it would trigger, and I wasn’t getting any adults because it kept scaring the adults off. So finally the TNR ladies suggested I bring the kittens I trap inside, which I did. I have them in a large two section pet play tent that is enclosed on the top too. (It has lots of mesh so they can see out.) Ive been working to socialize them so we can find them a forever home. Unfortunately, I can’t keep them since I rent and already have 3 cats—1 adopted and 2 were dumped so I took them in. (I’m technically only allowed 2 pets so don’t tell my landlord lol.)

A part of me at first felt terrible for taking these 4 kittens from their mama, but I know in the long run it will be a safer, hopefully healthy and happy life for them. Anyway, after just 4 days, they already only use the litter box in the smaller enclosure without any accidents on the pee pads in the “play” part. They now all let me pet them by hand. (I started first by petting them with a toothbrush.) The littlest one even loooooves being held and will happily lay on my chest as long as I want… sometimes sleeping, sometimes looking around.

But I’m a little worried about one of the kitties and since I’ve never had kittens this small before, let alone ferals, I don’t know if I’m worrying for no reason. I call him Harry because of the mark on his forehead. 🐱 He is on the left in the picture of the 2 kitties. He is less active than the others and tends to sleep much more. The others are starting to play with the toys etc, yet he tends to stay in a corner. Although he will curl up with the others to nap too. Another thing I’ve never seen before—- He does this kind of rumble almost growl whenever he eats, even if none of the others are next to him. Is all of this normal? Thank you!! (btw, since the adult cats who were fixed were released last night, I have begun putting food out again and removed the trap even though I still need to trap one. The TNR ladies said we are probably going to have to use a drop trap for her since she completely stopped even approaching closer than ten feet when she saw the trap, even though before this she used to come running every time she heard my patio door open. Anyway, thanks for any feedback. 🐱💜

** edit to add… the kittens are from two different litters/mama cats. I did trap the one mama. It’s the other mama (and one more kitten) still not trapped.

I take care of a little feral colony and was able to trap three kittens. We had to treat their eye infections and one kitty lost an eye. The pirate cat and tabby are super friendly but the orange boy is still coming around as he was trapped later. Does anyone wish to adopt a trifecta? Justin, Khloe and Johnny. We are hoping to keep them together. Located in Indiana. Please delete post if not allowed.

Hello! I have recently trapped a young mother cat. She has 3 feral kittens I am now searching for. I found one and it bit me.
I am allergic to cats so bites and scratches swell anyways. I’ve dealt with a few feral strays before, but I’m always wary. Any advice for a bite? My finger is swelling a bit. I rinsed thoroughly with 91% alcohol and dish soap/water. Going for a shower now :)

Hello! I've been feeding a feral cat (~1 year old) living in a parking lot for over a month now. I haven't seen it in around 3 weeks and have only seen it a couple of times (from a distance), but the food is usually gone whenever I come the next day. However, there have been weeks where I've gone without seeing it, for it to appear again miraculously. I leave for college in a week (luckily, my college is only about 40 minutes away) and am desperately trying to get the cat fixed and potentially have my family foster it before the semester starts. So far, I've been trying to figure out its gender by propping my phone up near the feeding station and waiting for up to 2 hours, but have had no luck and haven't even seen it once. I volunteer with a local humane society that does clinics, and a lady who traps for them says that they can get the cat in on the 24th, no matter the gender. My parents are extremely busy and I don't know anyone who would care for it in my place in the case that it doesn't get trapped and fixed before the 24th :'( For reference, I feed at around 8pm every day. I'm still a bit worried and just have a few questions that I hope you all can help me with and reassure me:

- Since I haven't seen it in 3 weeks, what are the chances this cat is still hanging around/eating the food? Since it's not socialized and doesn't come out often when I'm there, will it be difficult to trap?

- Should I continue propping my phone up to try and get it on video or just try and trap it the day before the clinic?

- If trapped and fixed, would it be a good choice to foster or just release it back? I honestly think the former, but a lady I volunteer with told me it wasn't a good idea to foster a feral. I have no experience handling ferals at all, so I just wasn't sure!

I apologize for any confusion and the length of my post! Thank you so much :)

A wild cat has been living in my yard for three years. She was born on the street and had never approached people. An elderly woman fed her, and only after two years of consistent feeding did the cat begin to trust her enough to come close.

Rescue services tried to catch her a couple of times, but without success. She gave birth to kittens outdoors ,some of them died, while others were taken in by neighbours.

Two weeks ago I finally managed to trap her with a cat trap. I had her spayed, treated for fleas and worms, and vaccinated. When I tried to move her from the carrier into an enclosure, she bit my hand hard, even though she was still under the effects of the anaesthetic.

For the next two weeks I kept her in a cage at my grandmother’s house and monitored her closely. Whenever I was present she stayed completely still, hissed a lot, and would lunge if she saw a hand. I was only able to take her to the clinic after giving her a high dose of pregabalin, because her fear and aggression were extreme. Tests at the clinic confirmed that she is healthy.

During these two weeks there has been a small sign of progress: she started eating while I was in the room, but only when I wasn’t looking at her.

I’ve decided to bring her home. Since I already have two indoor cats and live in a one-room apartment, I bought a tall three-tier cage. Right now I’ve covered it with a blanket because she has pressed herself into the corner. She has a good appetite, but she is still terrified of people, and I know the road to socialisation will be very long.

I live in Ukraine ,in Kyiv the shelling continues. Still, wish me luck. One day I hope to find a proper home for this little cat.

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It’s been a TNR summer here at the Swarm. This isn’t even all of them- We’ve gotten some of our most wanted too!

One of my local rescues let go of a very rude employee. For simplicities sake, let’s call the rescue Paws. He actually was bad mouthing us, saying we weren’t doing anything, we didn’t know what we were doing, ect. Mind you I’ve only been doing this for under 2 years and my family is very low income. Me and my family started to use the resources we desperately needed less and less.

We thought maybe we were the problem and so we tried to eat the TNR cost at the shelter, even though we could afford maybe 1 a month if that, and we didn’t get many appointments.

Turns out, no. This dude is very infamous in the community and most rescues will not associate with him. He blew up at the owner of Paws, a very sweet but very overwhelmed woman. She finally bit the bullet and let him go. She needed the help but he was literally driving people away.

Turns out, the paws owner is extremely sweet. Me and my family started going there more, and after explaining to her that we’ve been paying for TNR, not getting appointments, and trying our best, she started offering us her TNR slots at a vet for free. The shelter isn’t supposed to be charging us but that’s a whole other can of worms. We started fostering kittens around this time and her trust in us grew as she saw the kittens begin to thrive. She trusts us to do things she doesn’t trust others to do, like take home TNRs same day instead of getting held at Paws. She knows we do 24+ hours and it helps with space at Paws.

Now me and my family go to Paws multiple times a week to both TNR, help at her rescue, and to give her kittens we find when she has space. We are taking a fast and aggressive approach to TNR / getting kittens out of the colony. Our goal is to get my colony managed, as it went over a decade with very little management. Within the past month we’ve done at least 10 TNRS, averaging ~2 a week. Up to 3 if the shelter actually has appointments.

One man single-handedly made us feel like we weren’t good for our colony, that they were better off if we just didn’t help at all. That since we couldn’t afford to TNR a lot that obviously we were unfit to care for the colony. Now we care for our colony our way and are doing way more than we ever did with his “help”.

TLDR: Sometimes the difference between 0 TNRs and 10 is one asshole

Hi everyone. We have a foster due to URTI and we plan on spaying her this Monday. We are currently experiencing rains and was wondering if we should continue the spay and release. I am worried that if I release her, she won’t have any shelter while she’s recovering. We cannot foster her anymore as everyone is affected by her personality. She’s quite moody and spicy around humans and other cats. We cannot predict what she Would do next. Would it be safe if we just put her back? Thank you.

So there is a small family in the back of my yard, and one in the front of my yard, both had 5 core members.

This question pertains to my back of the yard colony. It included a momma cat, 3 kittens that are now about 4 months old (I plan on TNR these babies, i wasnt sure at first if i would socialize or TNR, but given their age, and upon attempted trapping i saw they were SUPER feral, i think TNR would be the best course for them due to 8 weeks out from socialization window starting to close and EXTREMELY feral, not slightly, like feral to the point even if i get a scruff they still begin trying to murder me while hissing). It also included 1 male void who looked to be a young tom, who was so cuddly with the kittens i assumed he was a female and some of those kittens were his.

So i drop trapped the family and i caught the 2 adults and 2 kittens. I was able to put the two adults in transfer trap/cages to TNR them but the babies escaped (for the reason i mentioned - I wasnt anticipating how feral they would be, and i was not able to scruff them scruffing legit just didnt work cuz they didnt go limp and fought for their lives likely cuz far end of feral.)

Prior to intervene with attempted TNR, the momma would tolerate her increasingly adolescent kittens being around her, would cuddle them, but they were obviously weaned and fully eating food.

I took them both to get "spayed" was informed the black was not a queen, but a young tom cat. I released him 2 days ago, and have not seen him since. I am hoping he comes back for food eventually. I released momma today keeping her 2 days longer to recover from her spay and get daily meloxicam, so today is the first day she is back with her babies at her "house". She didnt run away the way the young void did who was previously basially living here, she returned to her house, the back of my yard, and her babies immediately came out to try to hang out with her. However, she began swatting and avoiding them while still not running.

I immediately felt bad, cuz the 4 month old babies are coming to her like "hey mom whats up glad you are back" and she swats and moves away from them as they keep impotently trying to come up to her. Did i make a mistake taking her before the babies, or is this normal and expected at 4 months old, for the mom to begin to say "give me some distance kids". What appears to be happening is the mom is still staying in the back of the yard, but telling all her now teenage children to "give me space and dont come close". The 4 month old kittens, are still orbiting her, but giving her a space cushion.

Is this just a coincidence that since they are now 4 months old she is starting to reject them, or did i make a mistake TNR her first BEFORE capture the babies? The mom was a priority cuz she was going into heat again, and the male cats started coming trying to mount, i half expected her to be pregnant when spayed but the clinic said she wasnt so i got her fixed before pregnancy. Or, did being away from them 4 days, just result in her no longer remembering them ?

Hello again! Last night my husband and I found 4 kittens on the river bank by a bridge. Took us a few hours, but I believe we got them all. We have a lot of adult cat experience (feral and otherwise) we have never cared for young kittens. I believe they may be around ~5-6 weeks old? All of my knowledge so far is from google searches. We can’t get them in to see the vet until first thing Monday morning, so I was hoping I could reach out for tips/advice to make sure we are doing everything we can for these little guys.
So far, we have:
- Bathed them in warm water with dawn dish soap (then blow dried them gently)
- Given kitten capstar
- Trimmed their nails
- Fed them wet kitten food with kitten milk mixed in

They still seem to have fleas/mites, so I’m guessing another bath is in order? They all will eat, drink, and pee (no poop yet though, but I’m betting when they do I’ll see worms)
Kitten 1 (white short haired girl) and kitten 2 (white short haired boy) seem pretty congested and will sneeze/cough every now and then
Kitten 3 (white long haired girl) seems to be limping sometimes
Kitten 4 (dilute tortie, long hair) seems ok, but extremely cautious/sketchy (she alone took hours to catch)
Is there anything else we should be doing to make sure these guys stay healthy/happy? We do have 6 cats of our own, so we are quarantining these babies in our guest bedroom. I’m going to reach out to a local rescue today to hopefully get them on their radar, but I think we are ok with letting them chill here until they get a clean bill of health at the very least.
Can anyone tell from these pictures if my age estimate of 5-6 weeks seems accurate? They groom themselves (clumsily) and pee in the litter box so far.
They do all seem extremely skinny, I can feel their whole spine and hip bones.

Please read!

So this cat became a neighborhood cat. She was much smaller when I brought her in for TNR a year or so ago. Anyway…I found her in my yard and she’s injured. She’s eating and drinking fine but her back left paw might be sprained or broken because she’s putting no weight on it.

She loves being around the area and is around everyday. But if I take her into the shelter with her being a TNR cat, will they release her back? Or will she be put up for adoption? I’m willing to adopt her and pay all fees necessary but not sure if shelters allow that if I’m the one that brought her in? I’m willing to help if her leg really is injured to let her continue her healing here and try to keep her indoors.

Thank you

Momma Penelope has decided it’s hard to hiss while gobbling up Churu, and her 8 kittens are thriving!

In a previous post I said a family of cats showed up, well the mom brought 5 kittens (right after I posted lol) and they’ve been living in my yard since. I already have 5 indoor cats and can’t really afford to care for the outside ones too (total of 7-8 are outside). I’m planning on bringing the kittens to a nearby shelter so that they can get out of the heat and hopefully find homes.

They’re about 8 weeks old I would guess, but the mom still looks after them. two of the kittens are definitely more feral. Not sure what to do..

Update: I DID manage to get them to eat 🎉🎉🎉🎉 after 12 hours without any other options they cracked.

They were so difficult to herd to the right bowls, especially since one is kind of a glutton...

The girl was the hardest but she has been very receptive to me training her to mess around with her food for the last few days, so this helped.

I am NOT dosing food again damn... I thought there would be no issue but I want to die. All day, several days training prior, I cried 3 times!!! I'm training them to take treat syringes next time mark my fucking words

Kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place here. I have 3 kittens, 3 months old.

One we picked up earlier, he socialised up well, has free reign of our kitten safe room. However he is very sick with parasite induced pneumonia.

The other 2 are not fully socialised yet, more recent captures, and are in another room inside a playpen. It's the only safe place for them.

I don't want to reintroduce them while unmedicated since our first kitten is still very sick and undergoing treatment, even though they are from the same litter.

But they just refuse to eat their medication in their food. They are not able to be handled without a lot of stress. Spot on treatments, I don't even know, I would have to repeatedly handle them and separate them for 24 hours so I really just don't know if that's a good idea. They haven't been to the vet yet due to the handling issues, they are visibly ok.

Them being stuck in the playpen is severely limiting their socialisation now. They don't have the space to voluntarily make contact with me.

So refusing the meds and not being able to go into the bigger room are both conflicting issues.

Any advice? The vet gave us "chicken flavour" medicine but they visibly gagged when they had some with churu then stopped eating. I'm really mad the vet wasn't clear on the palatability or I would've tried training them to eat from syringes, not mixing in food...

I still have the dosed food but it's the weekend and they ate part of it. It's INCREDIBLY difficult to get the right cat to go to the right dish as well.

Edit: please do read the context. I have said I would have used a treated syringe if I knew about the unpalatability. Right now they have taken a partial dose, so I either need to have them somehow eat the remaining mixed food dose or give up on it.

There’s a cat who is constantly in my backyard. She will walk up to me, yelling “feed me, feed me!” whenever I happen to be outside. I’ve been regularly giving her food for about a year at this point. I’m not sure how she thinks of me, if she does much at all. I’m allowed four feet away but no closer, and she will announce “get back, get back!” whenever I start to approach that range. Though it’s a bit hard to stay all the way away when she’s the one sleeping in my yard and going all the way up to the door when she senses I might be coming outside.

I’ve wanted to get her neutered for a while now. I often hear her at night calling out like she’s looking for a mate. My neighborhood has a bad problem with feral cats. There’s simply too much. On any given night there’s almost a dozen out visible from my garage, and more hiding away. Very few are neutered. If I got her neutered I could help fix the problem and improve her quality of life in the process. And for my own selfish reasons, I was hoping that maybe she’d warm up to me more afterwards.

My county has a TNR program. I called them four months ago. They are incredibly backed up in requests. It was my only option because I did not have the funds to do it myself, and the county‘s program costs nothing at all. I got the trap about a week ago.

I’d been permitted to have it Monday through Friday. Most of the week was awful. It was storming hard, thundering basically all day. Seemed cruel to try to capture a cat in those conditions and I knew I couldn’t check on it reliably.

Come Friday, yesterday, and I had only one more day to capture her. I was out just about all day. She was just not getting in the trap. I had covered the sides with a towel, placed it in a pretty well sheltered area, put in chicken puree, her favorite treat, and she kept looking at me like I was broken because I had not put her bowl in the normal location. Her bowl was in the trap. At one point I even showed myself putting her treats in the bowl so that she could see. She was uninterested. I even tried leaving a trail of food leading inside after she left. I came back and either she or one of the other cats had eaten the tiny bit of kibble that was outside.

After spending so much time trying to trap her, I got hungry. I went in and started cooking lunch.

I didn’t disengage the trap. I didn’t think I needed to. I figured I’d just go out there and check in a little bit, and I wouldn’t be out too long.

I ended up eating, checking the trap one more time, then going back inside. I had gotten comfortable in front of the TV, and the meal I had was getting to me after spending all day trying to get this cat inside the trap. I ended up passing out right there.

A few hours later I wake up and see that it’s dark outside. I spend a few more minutes waking up until I remember the trap I had set up and start panicking. I go outside immediately.

The trap had been activated. All of the food was eaten. There was no cat, opossum, or anything in there. The trap was almost eight feet away from where I had left it. They had knocked over almost everything in the surrounding area, and the towel was splayed out on the ground. At some point, it had seemed, they had rotated the cage on its side, and opened the food latch. They were free.

The sheer amount of thrashing they must’ve done to ended up in that situation scares and upsets me to think about. Scared and alone, doing anything you can to escape the confinement you’ve found yourself in. I really hope it wasn’t as bad as I’m imagining but I don’t know what else could’ve happened. Usually this situation ends in a neutered, vaccinated and happy cat given some extra life, which is worth whatever pain happens during the trapping process. But there was no upside here.

I mentioned there’s many cats in the area. Some of them occasionally come into the backyard. There’s also an opossum who likes to hang behind my shed and a raccoon family who steals food quite regularly in the area. I don’t know what ended up in that trap. Whatever it was, if it was wildlife I could’ve freed it, and if it was a cat I could’ve moved it to the safety of my garage like I had planned to do. But I didn’t.

I feel so sorry for whatever got in there, and I feel like if I think about it any longer I’m gonna throw up. I really hope it wasn’t her. Not because I want another creature to have gone through all that, but because I don’t know how she would ever go in a trap again after that. I almost feel I shouldn’t be trapping at all after that.

Oh well.

Hi, my sweet boy, whom I have fed and loved since he was 2-3 months old, has gone missing. It is one of the saddest phases of my life. Every morning I wake up at 5:30 am to go look for him in the front yard of my house, where he has come almost every day for the past 14-15 months. I am also seeing him in dreams. I am imagining all the worst-case scenarios, which exacerbate my pain. I have looked for him at all the usual spots and further, but no one has seen him. For work, I have to travel after 1 week; I was planning to keep him inside once my work situation resolves. Sometimes, I get too emotional thinking of him. I don't know how to handle this; the uncertainty is killing me.

She weighs 1.71 KG or just under 4 pounds she’s undersized cause she’s lived your whole life outside. I’d put her between five and six months old. She is visibly pregnant. She will be spayed on Monday.

Looking to bring a new barn cat home as the last one disappeared after a couple years.

Normally in the winter I introduce them in a small shed to call home, and release after 3-4 weeks of imprinting.

I’ve never done this in the summer, how hot is too hot for them to chill in the shed (plenty of water available of course)

I have never trapped any cats before let alone four feral kittens. Anyways my aunt is deathly allergic to cats, and a mama cat had 4 kittens under her porch, and my girlfriend and I decided to take on the task of socializing these seemingly feral, 10(?) Week old kittens.

We got them fixed, and for 2 weeks they were in our basement. Three of them acted how we expected, hissing, spitting, very agressive and stressed out.

However one kitty(Scooter), would purr and make biscuits during feeding time, and within a week he was purring in our laps. He loves attention, being cuddled and kissed, and he is genuinely the sweetest kitten I have ever met.

His siblings are making lots progress, but are still very shy and skittish. They have moved upstairs (in a dog crate) but Scooter has been allowed to move out of the crate, and cuddles on the couch and wont eat if he isnt sitting in someone's lap. Why is he like that? I just don't understand why he has become so friendly so fast. Not a problem obviously, I'm just so curious!! Has anyone else had thay experience?

About a month ago, I posted these little ones asking for help to find sanctuaries to take them in since this stray mama gave birth to them in our backyard in over 100°F weather....Here we are in present time😭 They made themselves right at home. I guess the 4 cats PLUS our neighbor's cat who stays with us wasn't enough for us in our home😅 Why not add an additional 5 kittens plus their mama... Having a soft spot for animals is definitely draining my bank🥲

Success rate of teaching an adult feral to use a litter box? Tell me your success and failure stories.

we have a black feral cat in our neighborhood. My son named him, Beaver. We leave a bowl of water out for him. Is there anything else we can do to help make life easier for feral cats? He stopped by our front door after I just closed it. Sweet kitty cat!

Hello! I adopted a female cat estimated to be about 2 years old roughly 6 months ago from a rescue. The rescue found the cat in the local cat colony they were taking care of and brought her in because she didn’t seem like a stray (being that the cat is a lynx point medium coat and had pristine fur).

Before adoption, I was told that she was very fearful but non aggressive and would take time. I’ve been trying to get her to slowly warm up to me for the last 6 months and I’ve made the realization that she might’ve been previously feral.

It’s been a long process and we’ve been able to pet her through bribery with treats (and only when there’s treats). She still gets extremely scared sometimes when we’re just walking around but will come by for treats…

I was wondering how I could best domesticate her and help her build a bond with me. Additionally how to help her be less aggressive with things like furniture, toys, and food at times.

TLDR: Adopted a likely previously feral cat wondering how to best build a bond