I just finished dispensing scoopfuls of food to my feral cats for dinner. These are big scoops, because I have nine of them to feed. Nine. And please don't ask me about the ordeal I went through a few weeks ago trapping them to take them in to get fixed. It wasn't fun. No, no. Okay fine, I'll tell you...
I about flipped out when the mama cat responsible for seven of my nine cats (picured above)came out of her anesthesia and bashed her head repeatedly against the cage she was being held in. And I mean BASHED. She was hysterically panting and bloody, and I had no other choice than to let her out because I thought she was gonna kill herself in there. But once I let her out I realized it was worse to free her. She was still woozy from the drugs, and when she tried to run away from the big scary human responsible for her condition, she just kind of flipped around. She got tangled up in the fence, did some somersaults, and basically just druggedly wound her way as far from me as possible. But there was nothing I could do but try and catch her, because I couldn't let a cat that had just been trapped, held overnight, cut open, sewn up and drugged out into the mercies of the wild. It was SO TRAUMATIC. It was the worst out of control feeling ever- to just let that poor cat out. The rest of the cats were just fine when I let them out, and they were all back to normal the very next day. There was no sign that they had been through any trauma at all except that the little tips of their left ears were now cut off. The universal sign of a feral cat. ( this was why mama cat was all bloody- she reopened her ear wound from all the head bashing) Anyway, I cried myself to sleep a few days later when mama cat still hadn't resurfaced. I thought she was dead for sure. How happy I was when she showed her beautiful orange and white face the next evening at dinnertime. It's been about a month since that event, and she must not be too mad at me, because I still see her sweet face in my back door window.
It's been a year since I started feeding this mama cat, at the time she had one little kitten with her. She still won't let me come near her, and now she knows her instincts were correct. I wish she would forget about it, forgive me, and move on. It was the only thing to do, because she needs to stop having a litter every year (or more, who knows!) I would have had fifty cats back there by next year, and there is no affording cat food for that many cats. As it is , I still have one more female to catch- I have fixed eight of the nine. If I don't get that last one trapped and fixed, I could have more on my hands this time next year. It's out of control, I tell you.