“I started feeding a feral cat. She now hangs around the porch and I noticed she is expecting for the second time”
We fed a black feral cat on our screen porch for a year. He (Darth Vader) got fat, and then he lost weight. Then “he” plopped himself on the back sidewalk in front of our kitchen window nursing three babies. The message: “They’re your problem now.”
So Darth Vader became Darth Ann. We trapped her and the babies and took them to a low-cost spay / neuter clinic. Then we released them. If you can spay the mama, it would be good. Babies in the wild usually die horrific deaths.
Anyhow, winter came, and Tennessee winters can be bad. Now all of them live in our house and are the sweetest and most tame of all of our pets.
They adopted you. :)
My cat, my Granddaughter named her “Smores”, had hers in a very well hidden box in a store room. I had to follow her to find them. She kept them there for maybe a month then moved them to a perfect hiding place.
It was behind the heat pump where there was one space between bricks just big enough for the kittens to go into and hide but not large enough for her. She had a low drawn out “meow” which actually did sound like meow. She used that to call them to her.
After maybe two months she moved them all to the front porch, tho I noticed she moved them back to the hiding place once for a week or so.
She is a pretty wily and smart cat. She knows how to take care of them.
Great story!
A cat adopted us on vacation house rental at Lake Almanor in California. We were unpacking the car and he walked right in to join us and never left us. No tag, no chip, no “Lost Cat” posters at any of the veterinarian and animal clinics in nearby Chester, CA, none of the neighbors knew him. Being mid-August, winter wasn’t far away and he would have had zero chance in a tough mountain winter. So we decided to bring him home and adopt him. He was the nicest, most mellow and most pleasant cat we ever had. The kids named him “PK” for “Perfect Kitty.” We’ve got two successors and they are nice, but nothing like him. He passed about five years ago.
The hawks and owls get most feral kittens. The ones that make it to adult are usually smarter than their deceased siblings. Same for baby coons. I love raccoons.
Love your story...happy kitties!