Kasey's Cat Colony

A feral cat colony was established in Middlebury Township, Tioga County in July of 2003.  The goals of a feral cat colony are to control the population and to improve the health and quality of life of the colony cats by implementing the Trap/Neuter/Release program. 

The Trap/Neuter/Release or TNR program has been proven more effective than euthanasia.  Organizations that use the TNR program in the city find that when the cats were euthanized, in a matter of months a new colony would form in place of the destroyed animals.  But when the colony was sterilized, the population number stayed the same.  TNR works like this:  all the cats are humanely trapped in a box trap (either over time or in one mass trapping) and taken to a vet as soon as possible to receive rabies and distemper shots and to be neutered or spayed.  The vet will usually keep the animal over night for recovery and the next day the animal is released back to its home.   In order for the TNR program to work and for the colony to survive, the colony must be maintained by someone who feeds and waters the cats at least once a day and ensures that the cats have adequate shelter.

The following is a diary of a year in the life of the colony.

In Memory of Rascal

When I first discovered the colony I didn’t realize that there were so many cats or that they weren’t anyone’s pets.  All the kitties are either all black or black and white and it is hard to tell sometimes whether you are looking at the same cat or not.

I knew the first step in helping these critters would be to start feeding and watering them everyday.  Every morning before work I take a bucket of food and a gallon jug of water and fill up three different food and three water dishes scattered about their living area.  Most days, the cats eat about five pounds of dry cat food a day.  I was purchasing a 20-pound bag of cat food every four or five days.  However, Second Chance started supplying the money for the food and now the SPCA is providing us with any surplus that they have donated..  I supplement their diet with a treat of canned food once a week.  The feeding became very difficult during the winter.  The cats knew that their water would freeze fast and most would come out to get a drink as soon as I put the water in the dish.  I had to keep getting new water dishes because once the dish froze it usually cracked and was no longer any good.  I did find a water dish called a “solar sipper” that is supposed to absorb the sunshine and help stop the water from freezing, unfortunately, that only works to about 20 degrees, any colder and that freezes also.  It is very sad to go up in the morning and see little paw marks in the center of the bowl where they dug aside the ice to get a drink. 

In addition, during the winter the snow would get pretty deep and I thought (I don’t know if this is true or not) but that maybe the kitties could retain more body heat if they didn’t have to walk through deep, wet snow.  So I would take a shovel up the road and shovel paths from where they were sleeping to their food and water dishes.  I also took up some hay and stuffed it around areas that I knew they were staying in to try to block out wind and make a warm bed. 

The first summer I found the colony, the kitties were malnourished and the mothers had trouble feeding their kittens.  My husband and I found day-old kittens in the middle of the lawn, left to die, because the mother didn’t have enough food for all of her litter.  We found a little kitten with only one eye living under a pile of boards.  We found another kitten with severe diarrhea that died before I could get a hold of him to take him to the vet’s. 

Surprisingly, when I first found the colony, there was one tortoiseshell cat that had a litter of three kittens.  I believe that the momma cat was a drop-off since I could pet her and the fact that she was a different color.  Her kittens were semi-friendly, which helped with me trying to doctor their eyes.  Once they were old enough I had the notion that I could find homes for these little guys, but before I could start putting the word out, one of the kittens got run over by a car.  I decided then that they needed a safe environment so I could get them healthy and find them homes.  I took the remaining two kittens to my garage and doctored them for about a month before I found them a good home.  Unfortunately, about two weeks after I took the kittens, the mother disappeared, the same time a big red fox was hunting the fields.

After all of the trouble I had with the kittens, I knew I needed to start getting the cats neutered/spayed.  I began by calling around to local vets and asking if any of them would be willing to help me.  Most of them were willing to give me a discount but still wanted a substantial amount of money.  I contacted the SPCA and got a really positive response from Andy McIlvain, our local PSPCA manager, offered a voucher and vaccinations for each cat.  I then went back to the various vets and asked if they would accept the voucher as payment in full for the neutering/spaying procedure. One vet said yes.  Dr. Kreger has only charged for medication if the cat needs an antibiotic shot, flea medication, or ear mite treatment.  Second Chance Animal Sanctuaries is now covering the additional charges.  Most times a cat will need flea medication or an antibiotic shot which will cost anywhere from $10 to $20, respectful

Dr. Kreger’s time and expertise has been free.  He and his staff have been very helpful and flexible about trying to get these animals fixed.  To identify the cats that have been fixed, Dr. Kreger makes a small triangular cut on the ear so I can tell which kitties have been fixed.

At first, trapping the cats was not a difficult procedure.  I have a box trap that I bait with yummy soft cat food, and once the cat walks to the food and steps on the “trigger” the door shuts behind them.  The first couple of cats were easy, but after the eighth or ninth cat, the word got out and it began to get difficult.  One cat I actually tricked into the trap by basically chasing it into the trap!

To date, I have trapped and neutered/spayed fifteen cats.  We even helped a male cat that had gotten hurt during the summer with the neighboring farmer’s mowing equipment.  His back leg got partially cut off and he was dragging around a dead leg for months.  I finally caught this beautiful cat and Dr. Kreger finished amputating his leg.  He was also neutered and given his shots.  Dr. Kreger kept him for a couple days and some of his staff said he turned out to be a real sweetheart!  When I picked him up from Dr. Kreger’s it was pouring rain and I felt bad about letting him go in the cold rain.  My sympathetic husband built a fire in the wood stove in the garage and Tres  (spelling) (Spanish for three) spent the night cuddled behind the woodstove, had a good meal, used the litter pan and then let himself out the cat door in the garage!  I often saw signs of him during the winter, when I would see three paw prints in the snow

Last fall, Molly, a beautiful black and white hair kitty, had one kitten that survived.  Every morning she and her lonely kitten would sleep on the hay bale near the food waiting for me.  The poor kitten’s eyes were all crusted over and his nose was running.  I put some ointment in his eyes and tried to clean him up the best I could.  I could get a hold of him when he was little critter, but when he got bigger and faster he was harder to catch.

I soon trapped Molly to get her fixed.  The kitten was alone for a day or two and when his mother was returned she went into hiding for a few days.  The kitten was old enough to be on his own, but he was still lonely.  I began to coax him towards me each morning by dragging a stick in front of me.  He would chase the stick but as I went to pet him he would scoot back under the back porch.  I soon enlisted my husband to try and pet the kitten.  He would patiently play with him each morning and would sneak in a pet when he would get close enough.  This little kitten also loved to eat canned food.  When I would put out the canned food he would dive right in and start eating. It was when I could manage a few pets he realized what was going on.  I knew I needed to name the little guy and the more we played with him, the more we tried to pet him, I knew the proper name would be Rascal.  Rascal loved to let me get one or two pets before he would dart under the area that they slept in and then peek his head out at me with a mischievous little cat grin saying, “You can’t catch me.” 

One day I was playing stick with him when I started to pet him.  He didn’t move.  As I petted his poor skinny little body I heard a rumble start way down within.  Rascal was purring!  I think it surprised him that he could even make such a happy noise.

It soon came time that Rascal was old enough to get fixed.  He was not happy in the trap or when I returned him.  Dr. Kreger found that he was very sick and had to give him an antibiotic shot.  I was never again able to pet him, although I did become his buddy once again.

Through the cold winter, Rascal met me every morning to get a drink before his water would freeze.  I never knew that a cat could tiptoe, but when the temperature in the morning wouldn’t even hit 20° I swear it looked like he tiptoed.  Sometimes he would even venture to my house, a quarter mile down the road, and would peek in my sliding glass door until I yelled at him for traveling so far away from home.

In the mornings before I would tromp up the road in my farmer’s boots I would often see him and his mother along the side of the road or crossing the road to go hunting in the cornfield.  I worried about him getting hit in the road or getting caught in the farmer’s machinery. 

Rascal grew to be a very interesting looking cat and would often talk to me in the mornings while he anxiously awaited his food.  The soft cat food was still his favorite and he would be especially talkative those mornings.  He befriended any kitten that was born and still loved to hangout with his mother. 

Unfortunately, Rascal was hit in the road on August 15, 2004.  Rascal was my favorite little feral and will be greatly missed.  I gave him a proper burial in back of my house and hope that he is now in a better place where he will never be hungry or cold again. 

But there are happy endings, too.  This summer there was a crafty female that I could not catch before she had her babies.  She had five black and white babies on a hay bale almost right in the open.  I fed her canned food for two days, and then gave my husband that pleading look.  He constructed a corral in the garage and I went up and picked up all the kittens and put them in a carrier. I butted the carrier to the box trap and patiently waited behind the corner.  Jessie, the mom, could barely stand hearing them cry and walked into the trap.  They were quickly transported to my garage.  This surrogate mother began hysterical after the kittens were placed in the their new bed, but their mother didn’t go to them for hours!  Worrying that they would starve to death, surrogate mommy placed the kittens in a little cat bed and took them over to where the mother was hiding.  Then I placed a large blanket over them to make her feel secure.  The next time I looked she was in there with them.  Unfortunately, this prime area for Jessie was in the middle of my husband’s woodworking tools.   Eventually everyone got moved back to the corral in anticipation of the crawling and exploring days coming ahead. Jessie and her kittens spend six weeks in our garage.  We only saw flashes of momma as she ran to her hiding spot, but by week four we knew we had some beautiful friendly babies.  One baby looked a little skinny so I began to feed him some KMR with a dropper.  He soon associated me with food and would come crawling towards me at the sound of my voice.  Little Milo caught up quickly with his brothers and sister.

Once everyone started crawling around we noticed that one of the babies seemed to have a very unsteady head and could not crawl very well at all.  He would crawl a few steps and then tip over on his side.  He was persistent though and would make it out of the sleeping area to come out and try to drink the milk from the dish.  As the other kittens became steadier and playful, chasing each other and their toys, Wobbles tried hard but still tumbled a lot.  We had many people tell us that we would probably have to put him down, that they thought he would never be able to walk.  Ha, Wobbles showed them.  We worked with him daily, taking him outside in the soft grass to practice walking and we found he did better at a fast pace then a slow stroll.  He would take off across the yard without a fumble until he stopped.  Soon his brothers and sister were finding homes. We were worried that he wouldn’t find a home because of his disability.  I put a sign up in the veterinary office and ran an ad in the local paper.  I had one call from a lab that wanted to do scientific tests on him!  “No way,” I said, “I will keep him if he doesn’t get a home.”  (M two furbabies inside my house, however, were telling me differently).  Then a miracle happened.  Deb Jones and her mother were taking their animal to the vet when they saw the sign and they just knew they had to help this critter.  They came to see him and knew instantly they wanted him, provided he tested negative for feline leukemia since they had another cat at home.  The vet couldn’t get Wobbles in until Monday to have him tested, and his last brother found a home Sunday morning.  A pathetic cry emitted from my garage that I could hear in the house!  We tried to comfort him, but as soon as we would leave he would cry.  We gave him a stuffed animal for comfort for the night and hoped that his mother would come out of hiding and give him comfort.  The next morning, Deb and her mother came to get Wobbles.  He tested negative and was taken to his new home.  What a palace and what royal treatment did he receive!  He was instantly adopted by the other resident female cat, Fluffy, and female beagle, Betty, who found it their duty to mother him.  The male beagle/basset, Buck, watches over them all. 

I still have many cats to trap and two litters of wild kittens have been born up there this summer.  It is harder during the kitten season to catch the cats because I am afraid that I am trapping a nursing momma and the kittens will starve to death without her.  But I will keep plugging away at them and some day I will hopefully have them all fixed so that they can live the rest of their lives just worrying about the next mouse they are going to chase. 

My colony is the best example of why we need to get our animals fixed.  Unfortunately, there are more animals than there are homes and cats, especially, multiply very quickly.  This colony could have been prevented if someone would have gotten his or her animals fixed.  People complain that it is too expensive.  I argue that it is a worthwhile investment to make.  The reward of a healthy animal as well as knowing many more animals were saved the injustice of being born in the wild without any food or dropped off to be euthanized is worth it to me.