RESCUE STORIES

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Feral Cats

Hello and welcome to my 14+ years of experiences of our colony of feral cats.  I’ll start by telling you how it all began!!

Back in the early 90’s, I was sitting at my desk one morning, when one of our year long Italian students came running into the lab crying. She had seen a black cat being run over by a car driving into the company car park. We both went out to see if we could find the injured cat. Upon finding this poor injured cat, I was horrified at its terrible condition. It was half-starved, flea ridden and looked like it had been through several “wars” and lost. The cat was picked up by the RSPCA who I presume had it put to sleep!!

On my way back to my work place, I bumped into Glenna, a woman who had worked at our company for several years. She had also been told that there was an injured cat on site. We decided to walk around the site as we were quite perplexed as to why there should be a cat here on a chemicals manufacturing site which is set back away from housing estates, etc. 

What we found was quite alarming………….. Unbeknown to us, a large colony of feral cats resided on our company site and also on a non-working farm across the road. These cats and their kittens were not in good health. Both I and Glenna, being staunch animal lovers, decided that from then on we would start feeding them.

After 3-4 weeks of feeding these cats and them becoming less wary of us because of our help, we had names for a few of them.  Katie and Suzie were black and white long haired sisters, and two beautiful tortoiseshell sisters (Lady and Lady!!!) with the most amazing markings.  There were several black cats but the main character was Tom, who was definitely the king of the colony and would go on to father lots of kittens!!!

The two sets of sisters I have mentioned all had tiny kittens and these poor little mites were in a terrible condition with ticks, fleas and some also had cat flu!!  We tried to catch as many as we possibly could but as we were still viewed with caution by their mothers, some of these kittens obviously died and we never saw them again. On one occasion and with the help of two engineers, we caught Suzie, the mother of two kittens, whose eyes were badly ulcerated from the effects of cat flu. We all stood perfectly still next to the cage we had caught Suzie in and hearing their mother’s cries, slowly but surely, the two blinded kittens walked towards the sound. They were caught but had to be put to sleep to end their suffering unfortunately.  Suzie was duly spayed and over the next few weeks and months we trapped the cats we believed to be female to try and reduce the number of cats in the colony which at that time was around 15 !!!

Obviously, when trying to reduce and control the number of feral cats in a colony, there will always be 1 or 2 who escape and we also couldn’t capture any mothers whose kittens were too young to be left alone. We also found over the years that a “new” member would suddenly turn up out of the blue. Sometimes new arrivals would be treated as long lost relatives and welcomed but other arrivals would not be tolerated immediately, and for several weeks would have to go through the ritual of sitting in the sidelines and only allowed to eat any food that was leftover.

Over the years, both I and Glenna developed a real love for these cats and all their different characters and quirks. There have been bad times when we have lost some of the cats mainly due to road accidents (the people at my company tend to drive too fast on their rush to get to work, grrrr!)

Katie                 Suzie

Some of my favourites are…………………  Katie who I also nicknamed “Katieboots”. Griselda “narky britches” had an amazing character!!  She would swipe at us if we didn’t have her food on the plate within a nano second but, then would let us tickle her tummy!!  Katie sadly had to be put to sleep aged about 8 years due to kidney failure. Suzie, her sister and the quieter of the two, has now been re-homed to live out her old age.

Lady, a tortoiseshell with mainly white marking, was one of the most nervous cats in the colony. It took several years for us to get close enough to her without her running away. Tom, the big black tomcat who must have fathered 90% of the  kittens in the early years, was a gentle, laid back cat. He would regularly be hissed at and swiped by his female harem at feeding times but he would just sit back and take it all in his stride.

We have caught and re-homed some of the kittens over the years and all have settled into their new lives, just like any kitten. I took one kitten who I named Joey. His mother was Lady. She was really nervous and Joey, a huge grey haired tom, also had these traits. He was around 16-20 weeks old and although he never allowed me to touch him, he amused me in many other ways. His favourite pastime was chasing the beam from a torchlight around the room – this is great, especially if you’re a couch potato!! 

A few years ago we found a pathetic, hair all tangled, half starved and flea ridden Persian Blue male!!! We never discovered how he came to find his way to our colony and although he was just a bag of bones when we found him, he had still managed to father several kittens!!  We also encountered a huge black and white stray tom cat who over a period of several months terrorised our all our ferals. He was the most aggressive stray cat I have ever encountered and inflicted some very nasty injuries to some of the gang. We eventually managed to catch him and have him neutered. He was returned to our site and after a few weeks turned into a loving, attention-craving domestic cat. He was re-homed, and all returned to   normal.  This also goes to show that your everyday domestic moggie can behave just as “wild” - or worse - than any feral cat.

Throughout all the years of feeding and getting to know our colony, we have had upsets when we have lost one of them through illness or a traffic accident but we have had more pleasure in seeing most of them flourish and relax in our company. Given the chance I will do this all again as, contrary to popular belief, feral cats do not prosper very well on their own without human intervention.

I hope this story will give the insight that may prompt members of the public to think about homing feral and semi feral cats.......................  they’re great!!!

Margaret

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