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Old August 29th 04, 05:19 PM
Priscilla Ballou
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Ar Fai Ve wrote:

I discovered a feral cat and her kitten living under my
deck last Monday. I fed them dry food outside a few times,
and they immediately caught on to the pattern, and by
Wednesday morning they were coming to my door to wait for
the food. On Thursday, I used a live trap and caught them
and took them to the vet. They got a full health assessment,
all the standard tests for diseases and parasites, and
both were neutered. I am going to try to make both cats
indoor cats, and my main concern is the ability to which
the mother cat can be rehabilitated. She is about 1.5
years old, and as far as I know has spent her whole life
outdoors.

The kitten is only 8 weeks old, and he is really friendly
and social. The mother on the other hand is pretty much
hiding in a corner of my walk-in clothing closet. I tried to
offer her some wet cat food from a plastic spoon, and she just
spits and hits the spoon when it is offered towards her. I am
wondering if anyone has suggestions for how to proceed in
working with the mother cat. Should I let her stay in the
closet until she is ready to venture farther, or should I
have her live in a cage during this adjustment period?


If it's not horribly disrupting your life, I might let her be, since
this would communicate to her that you're letting her stay where she
feels safe. Make sure she has easy access to food, water, and a litter
box. Is there another closet you can use most of the time for your
clothes, etc? Now, this will probably mean it'll take longer to
socialize her (if it's possible to socialize her at all), since you'd be
relying on her to twig to the fact that you're an OK animal, but it may
be more respectful of the cat.

The other way, which is probably more "proper" is to confine her in a
small space and by tiny incremental steps make incursions over her
boundaries with gentleness and treats.

Perhaps begin with approach A (let her be), and if she makes no
discernable progress in, say, a month or so, move on to approach B
(pro-active gentle boundary-crossing)?

I've only socialized one feral kitten (12 weeks plus), and I used a
modified approach B. It took 16 days before he let me touch him,
although he was touching me before then. The feral kitten in my
guestroom cage right now (maybe 6 weeks old) came pre-socialized. It
thinks I'm its new Mommy and wants me to hold it and groom it. :-)

Good luck and keep posting. I hope others with more experience will
respond to you as well.

Priscilla