Mancat Monday: The Feral Edition

Hello, friends! You were supposed to get this post yesterday. My apologies for going MIA again. It was just a bit of a chaotic weekend, and I ended up never opening let alone turning on my laptop to work on the post. But, here we are now!

So, I mentioned on Friday how I ended up seeking help for a neighborhood feral on an urgent basis last week. We've had some feral cats come and go in our neighborhood for years on end. I always put food out for any that want a bite to eat, and so a lot of them know my house is a place to stop by for a meal.

All that said, one of the two current feral tomcats in our neighborhood showed up at my house exactly one week ago looking like this:

If you can't tell, that's part of a gutter downspout extender stuck around his neck. I can almost guarantee he got himself in that predicament and that a human did not do that to him, because even after a couple years of this cat stopping by my house for food on and off, he's still by far the most feral, least approachable cat that has ever lived in the neighborhood. The poor guy must have thought he smelled something delicious in whatever gutter that might have been attached to, because he clearly had his head in there real good. For a second I worried it happened at my house, but my gutters and their extenders are white. A lot of houses in our neighborhood have brown or grey ones like the one stuck on the poor kitty, so it's impossible to know where it happened, not that it mattered at that point.

That picture right there was the first glimpse I got of him, and I could barely tell the gutter extender was even on him. Then he turned sideways and the first photo above was the view I got. I was devastated for the poor boy. I immediately started trying to think of ways I could get that off of him, all while knowing that this cat runs away if he so much as sees me through the windows of my house.

The unfortunate thing is that I have a trap for catching animals like this guy, but it is currently missing. When my grandpa and then my grandma passed away a couple years and we acquired a bunch of their stuff, a lot of things got shuffled around and put in storage, and the trap went missing during that era. So, after discovering him like this, I kept putting more food out, because though this guy will run off if I come into sight, he also knows my appearance means more food likely showed up on the porch, and so he'll usually wait a bit and then come back. With more and more food to coax him to his usual eating spot, I tried lying in wait, tried to hide from this guy, tried to find ways to sneakily grab the gutter downspout extender and get it off of him, tried to find ways to trap this guy without an actual trap, and you get the idea. I failed all of the attempts, because this feral fellow is smart and very much so not a fan of humans. My only consolation is that the gutter extender was plastic and allowed for breathing room, and he was still able to eat and then jump over my gate to leave my yard like he always does.

All that to say, there are some rescue groups in my town who are willing to loan out traps as well as assist with acquiring medical care for feral cats. I got into contact with one of them, also explaining to them that this guy is not only in an unusual predicament, but also still intact, which I'd seen evidence of many times when sneakily watching him from my house. Thanks to the aforementioned rescue groups, within hours I had a trap in hand and there was already a vet willing to see him immediately whenever he was caught.

Trapping him admittedly didn't happen all that quickly. First of all, this guy shows up only every couple or few days. Lately, or at least before all of this, he was showing up every third evening like clockwork. What's more, there are other cats in the neighborhood, at least one being another feral I know of, and even more cats that have families but are simply let outside sometimes. And in addition to all that, because I feed cats, my yard gets a ton of opossum traffic overnight. Cats don't usually show up at my house overnight because of that. Despite my efforts to keep the trap out of service during opossum rush hour, I still managed to trap a baby opossum early one morning, and it was really fun trying to coax him out of the trap so that I could set it up again for the cat before I headed out to work.

I'm rambling, aren't I? Anyway. My mom came over to my house regularly to check the trap while I was at work last week. When I got home on Thursday, the trap was still empty. I added fresh, extra stinky tuna to the trap because you know how I mentioned above that the kitty had been showing up every third evening? Well, Thursday was the third evening since I'd first seen the kitty with the gutter extender stuck around his neck. I got ready to walk pup Astrid, and before heading out the front door with her, I checked the trap on the back porch one last time.

Brown kitty was inside the trap, but he hadn't set it off yet. He was straddling the plate that would cause it to close. I got a picture of that, which I'll share here. The photo is admittedly terrible, as it was taken through both the main door as well as the screen door, both of which are in need of having their dog nose art cleaned off of them.

While I was looking out the door, distraught upon thinking the kitty knew not to step on the plate in the trap and therefore worried he'd escaped untrapped, pup Astrid came up to watch with me. The feral fellow apparently heard Astrid approach, and then upon seeing her through the door, he panicked enough that he stepped on the plate and was thereby successfully trapped. Thanks, Astrid.

I'm not sure if you can tell all that well in the above photo, but the kitty was indeed still wearing his gutter trash necklace.

Those photos there were taken after he'd had about 15 minutes to slightly settle down. I had contacted the rescue group and a volunteer immediately headed out to come pick him up and take them to their vet. Before that, I had kitty covered in an old towel I'd grabbed and sprayed with Feliway.

Before the above photos were snapped, the poor kitty was freaking all the way out. He even managed to get his arm through the front of the trap and was jostling the door of it a bit, which is why you see the door of the trap pushed up against the house in some of the photos.

The rescue group volunteer took the feral little fellow straight to the vet. It was already after 5 pm at this point, but the vet sedated him, got the gutter downspout extender off of his neck, neutered him, vaccinated him, gave him a pain and antibiotic injection, and even microchipped him so that if he's ever found or trapped elsewhere in the future, I will hopefully be contacted.

This feral little fellow was deemed unable to be handled without sedation, so he spent the night in a large carrier at the vet's office for monitoring. The next morning, the rescue volunteer brought him back to my yard in that carrier. I was unable to be there, because it was mid-morning and I couldn't miss work that day. But, my amazing mom made sure to meet the rescue volunteer at my house and to get photos and video for me.

The volunteer said the poor kitty was very unhappy and was thrashing around in the cage, which is why his litter box was overturned and all that jazz. Just seconds after that photo was snapped, my mom and the rescue volunteer opened the cage door and the kitty dashed away faster than the speed of light.

I haven't actually mentioned this yet throughout this post, but I've been calling this kitty Bishop for some time. So, meet Bishop, friends. If you're curious, I'm a big fan of sci-fi movies and sort of just got in the habit of naming my feral friends after characters in the movie Aliens. There has been Hicks, Hudson, and Newt, and now we have Bishop as well as a little orange guy I've been calling Jonesy.

I admittedly haven't seen Bishop since he was released back into my yard. I've been putting food out in extra locations, including the perimeter of my property in case he's currently too afraid to enter my yard. Today would be around when he'd usually visit according to his old schedule, but we'll see if he's ready to come by yet. I hope he visits me again, but for now I'm at least glad he's free of his gutter trash necklace. I can't tell you how much sleep I lost last week, or how many nightmares I had while sleeping, because I was so worried he was going to get caught on something with that on him, or that it would get crushed or shift and he wouldn't be able to properly breathe or eat. He's free of it now, though, and he's neutered and medicated and all that good stuff, thanks to the amazing rescue groups and veterinary resources in my hometown.

I mentioned the other feral who comes around, whom I call Jonesy. He also needs neutered eventually, but so far he's also only coming around when he feels like it and not always with much consistency. At least he's not in an emergency situation like Bishop was. Though Jonesy has yet to let me approach or touch him, he overall does not act as quite as feral as Bishop, and even gets within a couple feet of me as long as I don't make any sudden movements. I'm wondering if, whenever I'm able to trap him, if he'll be deemed adoptable, or if he'll be trapped, neutered, and released like Bishop. I'm not sure how Jonesy would act once caught. I'm hoping he'll be a candidate for an indoor life.

Want to see Jonesy? Here's a little glimpse I got of him, since he's less likely than Bishop to run if he sees me taking a photo of him through the door. He also doesn't seem to mind seeing the other kitties through the door, though he's absolutely not a fan of pup Astrid.

Don't worry, Jonesy got more food after those photos were snapped. He's by far the smallest tomcat who's ever shown up at my house, but he also eats more than any others have. He can down multiple cans of food in one sitting. Though sometimes he visits me every day for a span of time, Jonesy lately only visits me every so often, and so I feed him as much as he wants when he shows up. When I first started seeing Jonesy I started to wonder if he was a female, and he hardly ever lifts his tail high enough for me to verify. But, recently he did, and he is absolutely an intact male. So, at some point this boy will have to lose those jewels.

Happy Monday, friends!

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For anyone curious, or if you'd like to donate to their cause, the rescue group that helped trap and transport Bishop is CATsNAP. That's also the rescue group from which I adopted my girl Eddy. Another rescue group helped orchestrate and fund Bishop's medical care, and that group is Hospice Hearts. I am beyond grateful for the care and kindness both groups offer to all animals in our area.

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Doodle of the Day

Today's doodle sums up last week when I was pulling my hair out trying to help feral kitty Bishop. It also probably depicts how Bishop felt about the situation, especially after the obnoxious humans got him trapped.

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Tip of the Day

September is National Disaster Preparedness Month. This is timely, as many in our nation are currently affected by hurricane season. Given this month dedicated to disaster preparedness, we'll be doing a series of tips on this topic. Our first tip in this series is a simple precursor to the more detailed tips that will begin tomorrow. And this tip today is to please realize and understand that if a situation is not safe for you, then it's not safe for your animals. For this reason, please do absolutely everything in your ability to never leave your cats or dogs behind in the event of a disaster. If the only safe option for you is to evacuate, then that is also very likely the only safe option for your furbaby. For this reason, never wait until last minute to consider preparations and plans, as then it might be too late. Always have preparations and plans thought through or ready. We'll start discussing such preparations and plans in more detail tomorrow. For now, though, when it comes to potential disasters, please indeed keep in mind your furbaby's safety in addition to your own.