Several weeks into kitten season, a granddaughter found a litter of kittens in a pile of leaves near my house in the yard of the home my husband uses for an office. The mother cat kept her away and moved them. I thought they were gone. A month later, three tabby kittens came around looking for food. One was grey and shy, one was black and tiny but brave, and one was big and orange. A grandson and I decided to start taming them. We got them to play with toys and come onto the back porch to eat. They were too afraid to be touched. I decided to leave them alone. This changed when the orange one showed up with a huge bite on his neck, growing goopier by the day. We lured them onto a back porch and shut the sliding glass door behind them. They leapt at the door and hid behind a desk back there. I called the local pound. Can you take them? No.

The shelter was overwhelmed with kittens.

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Above, three little kittens in the wild.

I was a little afraid of the kittens. Could they be harboring rabies or another disease? What about cat scratch fever or pathogenic cat bites? I called a vet and arranged for them to get the feral cat treatment which is spay/ neuter and basic shots, including rabies. I asked that the injured kitten get an injection of antibiotics. I bought some cat handing gloves. My grandson who works for a local vet caught them and one by one, he and I took them to get the feral treatment. Did I get them tagged with a cut on the ear to signify a treated feral cat? No, because I had and still have hope they can be pet cats for someone someday. Since the rabies vaccine doesn’t reach full effect for a month and because the orange one was hurt, they’ve been kept inside at my husband’s office in the house next door. They’ve passed the time limit. They could go outside. But they don’t seem to want to. And the office has had mice in the past. They have a job to do/

Now, my husband and I have three semi-gown kittens. The black one, Cobalt is friendly, likes to be petted and purrs for us. He ran outside once and ran right back in. I’ve declared him a pet. Probably my pet. The other two are still shy. They all use a litter box which dispels one of my many worries about having a cat—bad litter box behavior.

I always thought if I got a cat, which I wasn’t going to, I’d get a black female cat. Instead, I have this guy:

I really am not used to cats, especially not jittery cats. Cobalt was afraid when I simply moved a wastebasket in the office kitchen and started the dishwasher. Having no cat to look to for advice about humans, he hid for over an hour.

The point of this post is this: spay, neuter, and vaccinate your animals. A mom cat can have four kitten litters a year. Cats can be disease vectors. Outdoor cats suffer a variety of mishaps and a large number of shelter animals are euthanized. Feral cats are not just a country problem. I don’t even live in the country—I live in town right on Main Street. 

Feeding feral cats is not the best idea. They can fend for themselves. Feral cats can sometimes have colonies and territories. Their homes can be uprooted, leaving them even more vulnerable as is happening in this town in North Carolina. It’s difficult to tame a kitten once it is past the socialization stage, which occurs before they even leave their mother.  Some feral cats are genetically resistant to being tamed no matter how much human interaction they have. And I’m no expert on cats. This is why in general, I leave things to the experts. Jane Addams wrote extensively about the problems with charity which included the “rescuers” not understanding those they intended to help. I can see this applying to me and these cats. I have disrupted their possible colony formation and perhaps their genetic destiny to avoid humans.

Although there is a debate about if cats are wild animals or not, most wild animals find captivity stressful. However, there’s evidence that wild animals experience much stress and suffering. Cats, it seems, are only semi-domesticated. Most cats eventually tame up and as someone pointed out, “They like you a lot more when it’s cold outside.”

Meanwhile, I’m going to walk my highly domesticated dog, who doesn’t like cats. Cat advice welcome and needed.