Three Cheers for Three Kittens

Hip hip hooray!  I've been waiting all summer for new cats for the garage.  Late this spring my garage cat, Sal, took off and disappeared.  I prefer to imagine that she went to live in someone else's barn, rather than the likely alternative.  That's the hard part about feral cats, they often don't want to become tame.  I do everything thoroughly to get a cat acclimated to domestic life including confining her in large dog crate in the garage for at least five weeks.  Once they know that the crate is where food and water arrive regularly, then the cat graduates to nighttime loose in the garage.  Sal was with me for a year, and was totally acclimated, but sometimes a cat simply hears the great wild calling, and despite being spayed she left.

I prefer to work with the Fort Collins Cat Rescue for my ferals.  In June I let them know that Sal had left and not returned, and said I would be happy to get a cat or two to take over her job of mouse control in the garage.  As it turned out, they had two kittens that were coming in that week who had been living on the roof of a restaurant on a main street in Fort Collins.  However, once the young cats arrived at the rescue and the volunteers had a chance to handle them, they discovered that they were pretty friendly and would make good house pets.  Because they could go to a regular home, the rescue volunteers socialized them and adopted them out as house cats where they will likely live longer and be safer than as outbuilding cats. 

This cycle repeated itself multiple times throughout the summer, with me getting an email saying they had a few cats coming in, but then a few days later it was determined that they could to go to regular homes.  I didn't mind at all, since these were either ferals or cats with behavioral problems coming from the kill shelters that would otherwise be euthanized.  Because the rescue knew they could send the cats to me if they ended up being too wild, they could take them.  More than a dozen lives were saved this summer because I was available as backup for cats who ended up just needing a little more attention!

Finally though, three kittens arrived at the rescue from a trailer park on the north end of town.  The trailer they were living under was to be demolished, and the three kittens running around underneath it were considered a public nuisance.  Residents who lived near them were actually trying to run them over with vehicles, which probably contributed to the kittens strong aversion to all things human.

The eight week old kittens were trapped and brought in to the rescue.  They stayed for a whole week and yet still wanted nothing to do with the humans there.  That was the deciding factor, that they were still defensive and aggressive after a week of handling.  I was called in to come pick them up!

We got them and brought them home today!  It was a little exciting, since two of them are definitely not friendly and I needed leather gloves to get a towel wrapped around each of them.  Once each feline was a kitty-burrito I could lift them up and place them in their crates without worrying that they would explode and get loose.

We set them up in the garage in their own crates so they can all see each other, with food, water, litter boxes, cardboard boxes to hide in, and towels to snuggle.

The male has the most white and is also the most fearful and aggressive.  If you make eye contact with him he flattens his ears, then hisses and growls at you.  Because he seems to be loudly saying, "NO!", we are calling him Gnocchi.

The kitten that shows the least fear is grey and white with stripes on her legs.  She's the runt of the litter and a little female we are calling Orzo.  She looked fairly pleased with her new accommodations and even happily ate her kitten food once I had put her in her new crate.

The last one is also a grey and white female, but is a bit wilder than Orzo.  We're calling her Linguine.

Three cheers for three kittens!  It will be fun around here seeing how friendly we are able to get them.  I looked it up, and a group of cats is called a "clowder" or a "glaring". Judging by the dirty looks these young ferals are currently giving me, I think we have a glaring.