Feral Cats + Cat Food + Heartbreak = Lessons Learned

June the eighth of this year I told you about three feral kittens that someone dumped at our home. I was trying to avoid getting involved with them because the outcome is almost always the same. However, Mr. Pop caved and brought home a bag of kitten food from the market.

Since that time I have fed them and done everything in my power to try to domesticate the cats. They would have none of it. A few weeks ago we were awaken to noises coming from the roof of our house. Upon inspection we found the three cats romping all around up there. They were climbing up the pool enclosure screen to the roof and spending their nights up there. Problem number one.

Last weekend as I was walking back up the driveway after retrieving the mail I happen to look up at our roof. I could see something that looked like little pieces of tree branches up there. I asked Mr. Pop if he would please get the ladder and see what these objects were. He did and just as I feared, the things I was seeing was cat poop. The cats were using our roof not only as a playground but also as a sand box. They were scratching the coating off the shingles and using it as sand. Problem number two. (no pun intended)

We were faced with a dilemma. We could trap all the cats and get them neutered, but then we would have three neutered feral cats that we would have to release and god only knows what would happen to them next, plus there would be no way to keep them off the roof just because they were sterile. Option one.

We could do the humane and common sense thing, trap the cats and call Animal Control. Option two.

Now here’s where it gets sticky. Since the day Mr. Pop bought that bag I cat food I have been the one feeding the cats and trying to tame them. Mr. Pop was pretty much out of the picture. I had taken one of my animal crates out there and gotten them to the point they would walk inside it and eat. I just couldn’t be too close by. Each day for the past two weeks I would stay a little closer to the crate each day and finally last Friday morning I was close enough to bend down really fast and slam the door shut on the crate. I wasn’t fast enough to catch all three but I had two. I called Mr. Pop at work and told him the situation. Did he want me to call Animal Control to come get the two cats. He said absolutely. I asked him a couple more times because I didn’t want this decision left as only my decision. We both agreed it was the right thing to do. About fifteen minutes later the officer arrived and was so amazingly nice and understanding as he put the cats in his truck talking calmly to them all the while.

Now with one cat left that would never even come close to trusting me again, I needed a new approach. I talked to a lady at the Animal Control office and she said an officer would bring out, bait with cat food and set a Have-a-Heart trap. If the cat did enter the trap it would not in any way be injured.

Wednesday morning of this week at 11:30am the officer arrived with the trap, set it up and explained to me how to re-bait it if needed. At 12:15pm the cat went into the trap and the door shut. I called Animal Control and within 15 minutes they were here and picked up the cat and the trap. I cannot express to you how wonderful those people at Animal Control were during this whole heartbreaking ordeal.

So here’s the moral of the story and Mr. Pop would agree with it all the way. He brought the cat food here, but in the end it was me who had to devise a way to get the cats away. I was the one who had to look into their frightened faces in the carrier and the trap. In other words what Mr. Pop started was left up to me to carry out and deal with the many feelings of guilt along with tears.

We have made a promise to one another now. We will never feed another feral cat. If a domesticated cat should show up at our door, we will do our best to find it a home.

The other lesson we both learned is that neither of us should start something that the other one has to finish. We both agree, it’s just not fair to anyone.