feral cat update.

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Weeks ago I posted a question about taming a cat I'd caught in a Hav-A-Hart trap. I'd never seen the cat before. Initially the cat growled and gave out an explosive spit that sounded like an air rifle.

Five weeks later I can reach into the cage with a gloved hand and pet the cat. Today was the first time he purred.

Other than keeping the cage cleaned out and him supplied with food and water, I made a practice of calling some of the other cats over near his cage and petting them. That always got his interest.

He's still really possessive over food. If I try to pick up food off the paper in the cage, he'll grab my hand. I'm wondering if he was really feral. It took about five weeks to get to this point.

Sometime next week he's heading for the vet to get "tutored", shots and wormed. We may have another mouser. With the warm winter, the other cats have been catching mice almost on a daily basis. Those are just the ones I've seen so there's probably been many more.

A special thank you to the lady who said that a feral cat could be tamed.

-- Darren (df1@infi.net), February 14, 2002

Answers

I have two cats that were feral that my husband thought would always be wild. He was amazed when I picked Sassy cat up and she purred in my arms.Now she is the first to greet me and I plan to have her for ever . She never tries to get off the porch.The only cat I ever had trouble socializing was a big grey tom I got from a lady going to a nursing home.I had him for 6 months and the first time he got outside he headed right for her house 12 miles away and made it.It was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw.He would sit on her lap but never mine.Cats are something! Terry

-- Theresa Lipe (elipe@fidnet.com), February 14, 2002.

A big than you Darren for taking the time and energy and love needed to rehabilitate the feral or just abandoned cat, there exists in all of nature creatures the potential for love, care and companionship, one must just have the desire to seek it out.

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), February 14, 2002.

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