Cutest kitten ever?

Maybe I'm partial to white cats, but I swear this fluffy kitten is one of the cutest we have rescued!  She was part of a small colony in the west end, for 10-12 weeks old she is surprisingly friendly for a feral kitten, she has siblings who we still have to get...but this baby is safe inside!  

New shelters!

Connie met a lovely woman named Pam who noticed her feeding the cats and she offered to have new feeding and sleeping shelters made.  Our east outpost colonies got new digs before winter, so when the bad weather comes they can eat and stay dry.

Sadie gives it the thumbs up!

Mystery has new accommodations too

But of course she is sleeping on top of an old shelter

Eight years of blogging

It's hard to believe but I started this blog 8 years ago this weekend!  It was my first year feeding and I spent Thanksgiving Day rescuing Tibb's kittens, that was her last litter.  There have been so many changes since then, now we just have eight cats left, but still, who would have thought that feral cats would live to be 10+ years old!  It's a testament to the care they receive from all of us who love them.

This is the first picture I posted, only Lily the tortie is still around.  I miss all of the ones who have passed on, but we have new friends we feed too like Sadie and Misty.  I

I'm grateful for all the wonderful people I have met and the support, I often joke about how getting involved was the best and worst decision in my life.

Oh oh new cats at the colony

Recently there were reports of a cat near one of our existing colonies so of course I went to check it out.  No cats in sight, but I got good intel from the woman who has a hot dog cart there on weekends.  She said oh yes, the last 3 weekends two cats were looking for food, they had just been there!

I went back the next day, put out some food and sure enough two cats emerged from the woods.  They look pretty young under a year and were so hungry.  The problem is they are in a very unsafe area with no shelter, and there are coyotes and a bird sanctuary, not a good place for cats.   First step is to trap them and hope they are friendly.  Born there or dumped?  Hard to know....

Our new rescues

Meet our newest rescues!  Cisco is an older kitten who was rescued from an autobody shop and is being socialized.  He's come a long way and is now enjoying being held and purrs!

And then we have Gigi, well that is her name now, we will never know her real name because she was abandoned.  One of our colonies is near an apartment building and a tenant told us her sad story.  He tried to take her in but his cat didn't like her so she was being fed in the yard, supposedly she is 10+.  Well Jackie and I couldn't bear that so thanks to Susan offering up a spare room we were able to get her in to safety!

Some are easy, some are well impossible

It's been a busy catsitting time, I've gone more than six weeks without a day off, so I've had less time for trapping, but I did do a few local ones.  A new cat showed up at the 7 colony about a month or so ago, clearly male, so I decided it was time to get him neutered.

I showed up and he was sitting beside the feeding station, I set up the trap and barely got back to the car before he went in, one of the fastest ever.  Poor Herb was terrified at the clinic and hasn't been seen since he was released, I hate it when that happens, but I hope he is smart enough to be hanging around and comes and eats after we leave.  Update: just hours after I posted this I saw Herb around the corner at Mystery's!

Then there's Batmom, the nemesis of every trapper.  She's had litter after litter and is incredibly smart.  I was feeding her in a new spot recently and had hopes that Liz our master netter could get her.  Here she is out in the open with me just a couple of feet away but as soon as Liz showed up with the net Batmom was out of there, she knew something was up, and no amount of hunger was going to bring her back, sigh.

Guess I will be rescuing another batch of kittens in about six weeks or so....

The dangers of dental floss

Last weekend Oliver wasn't eating and was vomiting, at first I didn't worry because occasionally that will happen and the cat recovers but when day two came and he still wasn't well I was worried and then Steve mentioned that he had seen Oliver digging in the bathroom garbage.

Thankfully one of our vets was open Sunday and he took an x-ray and sure enough his intestines were bunched up indicating he had swallowed something.  They sedated Ollie and found dental floss under his tongue!  As the vet explained, sometimes when you release it the floss or string or whatever can then pass through but not necessarily and there was a chance he would need emergency surgery.  Needless to say, we were extremely upset.  We took him home and watched him every minute, thankfully there was no more vomiting and he perked up and started eating.  I think we are now almost at the point where we can stop being concerned that it's probably passed through but he could have died and/or had to have very expensive surgery.  I felt like the worst cat mom ever, now our floss is secured.  Our little sweet boy is only three so I hope to have many more years with him.  

So be careful, you never know what a cat will get into!

Oliver and Blinky

Oliver and Apollo

Odds and sods of kittens

Even though summer is winding down the kittens keep coming!  This week's trapping provided us with an odd assortment of kittens, one cute tabby before the cops were called and Lesley was ordered off the property, a cute little orange guy from a colony in a residential neighbourhood and older black kittens from an autobody shop.

We also trapped two females that we were trying to get for quite a while so it was a good week!  Well not as much for Lesley since she has the black kittens in her living room and they have liquid diarrhea!

Furever homes for these lucky cats!

We had some great news recently, we found wonderful homes for three of our special rescues.  Licorice and Hershey were living in a barn, so were so friendly we couldn't leave them behind and Hershey has a birth defect to her paw, it hasn't prevented her from playing though.  We figured out Licorice is her mother and they are so cute together.  A lovely couple adopted them and they will have a great life with them!

 And of course you remember little Frankie?  At one time in danger of dying from an infection due to wounds on his legs, he made a full recovery and just last week Jess drove all the way from Brantford to adopt him, he's been making up for lost time, playing like a fiend.

I'm over the moon happy for these three fantastic cats and I wish them a long and happy life!  This is the great part of cat rescue.

Our wobbly girl

Our latest big job has been a large group of cats in a laneway behind an apartment building.  They are fed by residents but don't seem to have homes so we came in and caught eight in one night, another eight or so to go.  One of them is this adorable white cat who has mild CH, she is a delight and so doesn't belong on the street!  Meet Annabelle!