Showing posts in colony care
Costed at replacement value, volunteer labour is about two-thirds of what a trapping night costs and the clinic donation is about a quarter. A group that is already turning down surgery slots because nobody can trap should spend its next marginal dollar paying a trapper, not buying more vouchers.
Medical · Best PracticesThe 80% number is real, but it is a rate you have to keep paying, not a milestone you reach and bank. Most scattered, colony-by-colony TNR is a welfare intervention being sold as a population intervention, and the vacuum effect argument rescues use against catch-and-kill applies just as squarely to their own successes.
Colony & TNRThe frightened cat pressed into the back of the trap could be a true feral who belongs back outside, or a lost house cat who's one bad decision away from being returned to fend for herself. Here's how to tell them apart before you make the call.
MedicalTraps are cheap and cats are everywhere. The thing that actually limits how many cats you fix is surgery slots — and the clinic decides who gets them. Here's how to become the easy, reliable client who gets the appointments.
Colony & TNRThe single biggest thing stopping people from starting TNR isn't fear of cats — it's not owning a trap. A trap bank fixes that for your whole community, if you can keep the traps from disappearing.
Colony & TNROne of the "ferals" at your feeding station walks right up and rubs your leg. That cat is almost never a feral — it's usually someone's lost pet or a dumped one, and the next 72 hours decide whether it ever gets home.
Colony & TNRThe biggest colonies almost always start with one kind person feeding "a couple of strays" who were never fixed. Here's how to reach that person before the count hits forty, without scaring them into hiding the cats from you.
MedicalA cat you feed every day turns up limping, or with a wound, or just sitting hunched and hollow-eyed — and it won't let you within ten feet. Here's how to get an untouchable cat the care it needs without making things worse.
Colony & TNRThe cat you trapped and fixed two years ago gets picked up and dropped at the shelter as an unowned feral on a short clock. Whether she comes home depends entirely on what you did before it happened. Here's how to make a colony cat traceable.
Colony & TNRA pile of kibble on the ground feeds everything in the neighborhood, and the rats and raccoons it draws are what get colonies shut down. Here's how to build and run a feeding station that feeds the cats and nothing else.
Colony & TNRThe cats you feed can survive a cold snap on their own, but they do it better and lose fewer members when they have a dry, insulated box to pile into. Here's how to build shelters that actually hold heat, and the mistakes that make an expensive one useless.
MedicalTrapping night doesn't care about your plans. Sooner or later you'll pull a trap forward and realize the cat inside is pregnant, or that her belly is full of milk and there are kittens somewhere you can't see. Here's how to make the call without hurting the cat or losing a litter.
Colony & TNRYou've trapped the whole colony except one. She watches the others go in, eats around the trap, and vanishes the moment you reach for the string. Here's how to catch the holdout.
Colony & TNRPeople worry about colonies freezing in winter and forget that summer kills cats too. A heat wave doesn't give you days of warning the way a cold snap does. Here's how to get a colony through the worst of it.
Colony & TNRSometimes a colony's home becomes a demolition site and there's no way to keep the cats where they are. Done wrong, relocation kills cats. Done right, it's a slow, deliberate process built around one rule: confinement.
MedicalTrapping gets all the attention, but the overnight after surgery is where TNR goes right or wrong. Here's how to hold a cat safely until it's ready to go home.
Colony & TNRA single annoyed neighbor can undo years of colony work — one call to animal control and the cats are gone. Here's how to handle a complaint before it becomes a crisis.
MedicalTrapping is the part of TNR where good intentions meet a cat who has watched you for an hour and decided not to go in the box. Here's how to plan a night that actually gets cats fixed instead of making them trap-shy.
Colony & TNR · Best PracticesDaily feeding is the closest thing you have to daily surveillance of your colony. If you're not recording it, you're throwing away the most useful data you'll ever collect.
Colony & TNRYou feed the cats every day. You know most of them by sight. But could you tell someone exactly how many are in your colony right now? A regular census is the difference between guessing and actually knowing what's going on.
Colony & TNRA step-by-step guide to turning "I feed some cats" into an organized group that actually gets things done. Based on our own experience running TNR in a small Spanish town.
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