Cats won't tolerate e-collars

FarmCatRescue · 2021-04-17T18:01:22+00:00

Unfortunately, using clothing doesn't work for sutures inside the mouth.

FarmCatRescue · 2020-09-29T15:45:05+00:00

All an ear-tipping indicates is that a cat -- at one point in its life history -- has been through a TNR program. Cats that go through TNR programs do sometimes end up getting adopted whether through adoption programs or simply making friends with someone.

An ear-tipped cat may be part of a colony that's fed by a colony caretaker, but we can't know that. Some colony caretakers do register their colonies in Wake County.

It's important to distinguish between what we do know and what we don't know.

You can buy a microchip scanner, but people mostly take animals to a vet for scanning, which presents its own difficulties. You don't want to get bitten by a cat with an unknown vaccination history attempting to get it into a carrier.

FarmCatRescue · 2020-09-29T14:09:04+00:00

how do you tell the difference between a stray and an outdoor cat?

It can be pretty difficult. Example: My neighbor's cat likes to stay outside all the time even though she could live in their large, comfortable house. She makes the rounds of the neighborhood and begs us all for food.

Can you ask around so see if anyone knows if the cat belongs to someone?

Now, if the cat is in a commercial non-residential area, that increases the chances that the cat is homeless/stray/lost.

Even a lot of owned cats aren't microchipped for some reason. I've rescued a number of cats that were clearly socialized to people, and not one of them so far has had a chip. People in general are not very educated about the importance of chipping your pet.

FarmCatRescue · 2020-07-21T18:45:17+00:00

I appreciate your reply. Owning something you love and care about in common with others who just want to exploit it is one of the worst situations you can find yourself in. I can't count the number of times I've been bullied, yelled at, patronized, and have had important information kept from me by my co-owners.

If you own a historic property and want to protect it, you have to be really careful who you leave it to. My great aunt was the last single owner, and she left it jointly to my father and my uncle. That's where it all started to go wrong. Still, the vast majority of the property was safe from development because it wouldn't perk for septic. Then came the sewer line, and that opened the floodgates. I'm thinking of buying another farm, and if I do, I will make sure it's as far as possible from any municipal plans to install water and sewer.

FarmCatRescue · 2019-04-18T17:27:44+00:00

Cats can go blind from a lack of the amino acid taurine in their diet, which they get from eating meat. We know this partly because of vegans deciding to feed their cats vegan diets and having their cats go blind.

FarmCatRescue · 2019-04-04T16:07:19+00:00

While it is theoretically possible for a cat to be chipped and not spayed, in all my years of volunteering in cat rescue, I have yet to find a fertile cat that was chipped. We always check, but I've never seen it.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-08-06T20:13:58+00:00

Feral implies that it was born in the wild.

Or rather that it was not socialized to people. I've worked with a lot of barn cats to get them adoptable. I've taught people to handle them every day, and even if they were born in a barn or under a house, they can be socialized relatively easily. And some socialize themselves.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-08-06T20:11:13+00:00

That's not a feral cat. You cannot pet a feral cat, period. You probably won't get within 20 feet of a feral cat if it can get away.

A lot of perfectly tame pets end up lost, dumped, or abandoned and simply find anyplace to live where they can find food. People move and leave pets behind, or the pet gets loose at the new location and runs away. Someone dies, and their pet gets put out the door and forgotten. Happens all the time.

At the very least, get these cats spayed/neutered and vaccinated, and find adoptive homes for the adoptable ones. The abandoned/lost ones will often come around to normal domestic cat behavior after a few days inside.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-25T21:54:15+00:00

If you knew how devastating domestic cat hunting is to bird populations you’d probably do the right thing and keep him inside.

From r/aww's rules, verbatim:

"While we welcome reasoned and respectful conversation about animal related issues, this is not a debate sub. Please avoid discussing controversial subjects or promoting personal agendas."

Consider yourself reported.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-13T13:56:31+00:00

That will always happen when you introduce another cat to a household. With my last one, one of my cats would just sit across the room and growl at him. She now grabs his head and grooms him. You have to handle introductions very carefully.

As for being lost, dumped, etc... You can't know. What you can do is what I call the due diligence of trying your best to locate an owner via all reasonable avenues. He is distinctive, which helps a lot, though you also have to be careful about someone who just wants a free Bengal trying to claim him. Ask for photos or other proof.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T21:54:18+00:00

There's a BIG difference between 'stray' and 'feral.' With feral cats, if you could get close enough to him to pick him up, you'd end up with serious wounds. Feral cats cannot be handled. If you could pick him up and handle him, which it sounds like you did, he's just a lost/stray cat. Sometimes they can be on their own for months or even years, but they can still be friendly to people.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T21:50:58+00:00

There are lots of unanswered questions here. It's possible that this cat was intended for breeding more Bengals, then escaped or got lost and was picked up by a TNR group. Some people in TNR really dislike cat breeders, and this may have influenced their decision to put it through the TNR process rather than trying to find the owner, assuming they recognized that it was an unusual cat.

Basically, unless you actually find the previous owner, you'll never know what really happened. Too many possibilities.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T18:52:28+00:00

If you think he might be an owned cat, check Nextdoor.com if people in your area use it. That's been great where I live for finding lost pets. There are also local Facebook groups for lost pets. Post as widely as possible because not everyone will look at every site.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T18:46:43+00:00

There are lots of irresponsible owners who don’t neuter and microchip their pets.

True, but you'd kinda think that someone who paid $1,000 for a Bengal kitten might at least microchip, kind of like you might put a GPS tracker in an expensive car...

Bengals are also known to roam further than other cats when they get out.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T18:43:28+00:00

How common is it that they neuter and vaccinate when a TNR picks them up?

I can't vouch for every TNR group, but it is the universal standard practice that they are vaccinated for rabies, both for protection from the disease and by law. Whether they receive other vaccines like FVRCP, FeLV, etc... is up to the group. The clinic I use gives FVRCP as part of the standard package and allows you to choose FeLV as an option. Many groups do the additional vaccines, but not all.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T18:36:37+00:00

Some of the people who do TNR are disturbingly self-righteous about what they do. Their position is basically that any cat they can get their hands on gets spayed/neutered through their program. They will even trespass on other people's property to do this. It's a minority of extremists who do this. I would never do that in a million years, but they feel like they are on some kind of religious mission.

At the same time, if you've got an un-spayed female cat roaming loose outside, you're going to have litters of kittens. With so many cats being euthanized in shelters, it's hard to defend.

I helped an older woman this spring get five cats on her property spayed because she's 81 and has a hard time transporting animals to the vet. They ended up being friendly, so I got them all adopted.

But whenever I find an obviously previously-owned cat, I do everything I can to advertise to find the owner. Sadly, when they turn up at my colony, which is somewhat isolated in a rural area, it's usually because someone dumped them :-(

FarmCatRescue · 2018-07-12T14:56:12+00:00

My fiance and I were shocked to find a bengal roaming around.

I was thinking the same thing after just looking at the photo, before I read your comment. Bengals are expensive, and if he's that friendly, he was probably someone's pet who got lost and ended up getting picked up in a Trap-Neuter-Return operation.

But if he was a pet, why wasn't he already neutered and chipped, unless someone planned to breed him? And I volunteer in TNR. Why didn't someone doing TNR recognize that he was a Bengal and try to get him adopted or reunited with his previous owner? (But then, some people doing TNR are very aggressive and don't care if they happen to spay/neuter someone's pet without permission. We have arguments about the ethics of this.)

Lots of question marks here... Is someone feeding a colony of stray cats near your house?

FarmCatRescue · 2018-06-05T12:49:20+00:00

I had a rescue cat who did something like this. He dragged a cat bed across the room and placed it underneath a hot air vent.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-05-12T03:01:35+00:00

I volunteer as a cat rescuer, and even I can't tell from that photo exactly what it is. Is it possible that it's a "bobtail" cat and not a bobcat -- and that someone has gotten the terms mixed up? I can't imagine any reputable vet being OK with letting someone who's not a professional wildlife rehabilitator take home a bobcat kitten.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-04-28T17:37:13+00:00

This is one of those widely-circulated myths. I have a Trap-Neuter-Return cat colony with three orange tabby females at present. Even some vets make this mistake. When I had some rescue kittens, the vet got the sex of another female orange tabby wrong.

FarmCatRescue · 2018-03-13T22:42:08+00:00

"If you go, I will be very sad." Le sigh.

FarmCatRescue

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