Cat Re-Hab Project

Scared kitten

Not really sure when it started, maybe it was the stray cats sneaking in, the flurry of kittens leaping out of the yard when I would walk down the deck steps...   but I decided that there were too many cats around here.  I called up the SPCA to borrow some live traps.  I had done this before, years ago, and caught 2 or 3 cats but that was the end of it until recently.

There were just more and more cats showing up.  I filled the first several traps quickly and was catching them 3 at a time.  I thought that I would end up with the same ones again and again but oddly, almost every time there were different cats.  I started to name them to make it more interesting.  There was Gus, the massive gray tom.  Of course Dimitri, the one eyed black beast, my arch nemesis.  Leno = the cutest black kitten ever.  I was getting worn down by the volume of cats, the getting up early, picking them up after the spay / neuter to bring them back home.  I knew there was one more group of kittens that had just grown large enough to make it over both fences so I laid 3 traps and caught 2 black kittens.

One was a bit whiny and the other sat there looking at me, just quite and staring at me.  They went in for their procedures and the whiny one came back sooner than the calm one.  I thought about it and was going to give it a shot to socialize the quite one.  If I could save even one cat from all this nonsense I would be very happy.  The quite one had her bladder nicked during the operation so she was kept overnight and then 2 more nights.  I took whiny home and was trying to decide which one it was because she seemed so calm.  I decided to go for it with this one, Kira.

the great motivator

The first several days were just sitting in the garage in the cat trap with food and water.  It was getting messy so I turned the old laundry room into a cat jail and set Kira up in there.  Mostly it was her hiding in the back of the cat carrier and trying to escape.  Eventually I wore her down and was able to feed her cat food on a spoon.  My plan was, over the days, to feed her and slowly move my hand down closer to her as she was eating.  Over a week, this was working and then I went for it and one time while Kira was eating, I started petting her head with one finger.  She kept one eye on me the whole time while she was eating.