Showing posts in feral cats
The 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.
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 & 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.
Colony & TNRSome cats can't go back where you trapped them, and they'll never be lap cats. A working cat placement gives them a real home instead of a cage. Here's how to do it without the cat vanishing the first night.
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 & 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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