You know what that means, right?
Find yourself a feral cat, throw a piece of cake at it and run.
Since I work from home, I’VE BEGUN LOSING MY MIND I spend a lot of time talking to and getting to know the feral cats in our neighborhood. They tell me their secrets.
And there are a lot of them (cats, not secrets).
There’s Zorro, Fatface, Baby Momma, Fake Dee, Gray Kitty, Gray Tomcat, Blackie (we’re very creative with names) and a slew of others that stick their kitty pecpees in the kitty vajayjays and then leave come and go.
If the cats didn’t run away in terror every time I came near them, then I would have individual pictures for all of them.
The only pics I have are of Zorro because he’s semi-blind and doesn’t know when I creep up on him from behind (he also looks like Grumpy Cat) and a group shot of Zorro, Fake Dee and Gray Kitty hanging out. They like to sleep in groups, with Zorro often acting as elder statesman of Kittyland.
But mostly the cats hate me. They think I’m a freak, when really THEY’RE THE FREAKS, YOU FERALS! No matter how much sweet-talking I give them, they become wide-eyed and run away like a helpless George Romero zombie victim: they dramatically sprint a little bit, then stop, look back, slip, then sprint and repeat.
National Feral Cat Day isn’t about how I have low self-esteem due to the feral cats not wanting me- it’s about taking care of our current ferals and preventing more from being born (I think?… maybe I should actually read the website).
Since we have a little feral kitty community in our neighborhood, we’ve tried to control the population by using Austin Humane Society’s Trap-Neuter-Return program where you put your life on the line use traps to capture the ferals, take them to be neutered free of charge and then release them back into the wild jungles of Austin.
A year ago, we captured five of the unfixed kitties in our neighborhood and got their peepeess and vajayjays trimmed. If you feel that your life is boring or enjoy a good rush of adrenaline, try trapping a feral cat. I highly recommend wearing a ski mask and gloves before attempting to cage a wild animal with sharp claws. Since we trapped the cats, there have been no new kitties born in our neighborhood. The last time kittens were born (before the trapping), we took one in where it promptly died. Then all six of the kittens still in the wild died. It was a lot of fun finding dead kittens strewn all over your lawn. It appears that kittens had some sort of common feral cat disease (according to the vet), but Geoff thinks the restaurant next to our house killed them unintentionally with rat poison. We buried most of the kittens, including our beloved Sherman, and now our backyard is ample grounds for a Pet Sematary remake. I make light of this now, but finding dead kittens in your recycle bin, under your storage shed and in the yard felt like some sort of creepy message from Satan. No kitties should ever have to die.
But enough sad stories. The feral cats of the world need our help. If you have a feral cat in your neighborhood, call the Austin Humane Society about their Trap-Neuter-Return program. By trapping and fixing feral cats, you can feel good about aiding helpless animals, but more importantly, feel good about preventing The Great Feral Cat Takeover of Austin 2013.
7 Comments
Thank you for helping these cats and for raising awareness about TNR!
It takes a lot of balls to write sensitively about a program that, well, takes a lot of balls. Good job!
Ironically, though cats live very transparent lives (they have no secrets of their own) they are amazingly good at keeping the secrets of others. Sure, the anxiety of keeping someone’s else’s disgusting secrets usually prompts them to pee in your shoes or chew on your toothbrush, but you can count on that secret remaining in the vault!
I have a barn on the edge of my property. When I bought the place, I was told that every summer, strangers would be dropping off stray cats there, because the previous owner took in all the strays- which was quite obvious given the fact that I had to replace every floor and wall in the place due to the smell.
But they weren’t kidding. The cats show up less now, but a few years ago I drove all over town trying to convince my husband that I wasn’t crazy and I could hear a cat’s meow.
I came out of the store and a police officer saw me looking around the outside of my van, clearly confused, and asked, “did you hear that, too?” He had heard it as he drove by the first time. We found a kitten under the engine, straddled just above the tire. It had been on this trip all day. Finally every customer in the parking lot was rescuing the kitten and thankfully one man and his little girl took it home with them.
HA! I told him I wasn’t crazy! Well, I’m crazy, but I mean, I’m not cat-lady crazy!
Keep fixing those kitties! 🙂
I want to make a comment about how proactive and inspiring your writing here is, because it is, but I keep coming back to the flying happycats image. Thank you, for that. It made me read a post I never would have otherwise, because I don’t really feel feelings for cats. Now maybe I feel a little, but only for the feral ones 😉
My wife and I adopted a rescue kitten in that other great college music town from Campus Cats. 3 years later she still thinks I am Bigfoot in the morning. She was a kitten when we got her, a special needs kitten. Charlotte is that way till I give her a small amount of tuna when I get breakfast. Then she goes back to being scared :). Adopt Rescue, please everyone!
… I think you and your beau are amazing for being part of something that helps not only the cats but your small community… way to go Lauren..!
I haven’t trapped any feral kitties, but I HAVE had to capture my own kitty who we got from the shelter to take her to the vet so it was pretty much the same thing. I wrote about it in a piece titled, How to Capture Your Cat in 53 Easy Steps. I’ve had to do it several times now so I pretty much consider myself a cat-whisperer.