September Wrap Up

As September comes to a close, we thought it would be a good time to provide some information about things coming down the line and update our numbers.

October 16th is National Feral Cat Day! We registered with Alley Cat Allies and have a special blog post planned with the tips and tricks we’ve found that work best when living with a large feral colony nearby. We also plan to better advertise our blog to neighbors in the community so that they can follow our efforts more closely. Along with that, we will spread door-to-door educational material provided by Alley Cat Allies to inform the community about feral cats in general.

New kittens from July & August mating will begin showing themselves soon as they're getting old enough to start venturing out. We have already caught one and turned it over to the humane society to be socialized for adoption. We have also, lamentably, found several deceased kittens. They were taken by either a predator or by neglect from an inexperienced mother.

Our contact at the local Animal Control let us know that they discovered a litter of kittens recently which they already adopted out. This is extremely beneficial to our effort. We caught seven kittens earlier this year that the humane society was able to socialize and adopt to welcoming homes, but seven was only a fraction of the kittens that were born. Using improved tools & techniques that we've developed with the knowledge from that experience and the experience with cats throughout September, we hope that we will catch even more of these young cats before they become too old to adopt out.

We will begin October with a documented total of 49 cats in the clowder. This number has risen slightly over the weeks as we have noticed cats we had forgotten about and have seen some for the first time. It is slowly inching towards our initial estimate of sixty cats.

We had sixteen cats fixed in September and don't plan on stopping now. Our effort, combined with the cats that were already fixed, brings the total number of fixed cats to thirty. That puts the colony at 61% fixed. This a huge step up from the beginning of the month when only 26% were fixed. The remaining unfixed cats include several that will pose no challenge to catch. After that, a little finesse and tweaking of our tactics will be required. We have a number of different tools and plans laid out for this phase of the process.