We've been participating in North Brooklyn Cats' weekly adoption events when we have cats or kittens to adopt out. It's been an invaluable resource to get our cats seen by an enthusiastic crowd and I don't know where we'd be (or how many more cats we'd still have) without them.

This coming Sunday we're planning on bringing all of our new kittens, plus an adult cat named Tuttle. From our recent TNR project in Crown Heights we now have 8 kittens of varying sizes and personalities, all looking to find a way out of our crazy cat-filled house! Please spread the word and stop by Sunday at Muddy Paws pet store in  Williamsburg from 2-6pm. Here's who will be there (click the photos for more):

Mel is the kitten-mom

Mel, The 'mom' of the group, Mel is affectionate to humans but adores adult cats. She is not as manic as the other kittens, often perching on a high vantage, as if she is keeping an eye on them all.

Skittle: skittish but affectionate

Skittle, a lanky boy kitten started off the roughest customer but quickly turned into the biggest mush. He loves humans and cats equally, head-bumping everything in sight. He can be a little skittish still, but warms up fast.

Bear: he brings the party

Bear is a wild and wooly animal! He loves to play and wrestle and should live with other cats who love to roughhouse. He is vocal and purrs like a motor.

Fanta & Carmine are a perfect pair

Fanta & Carmine are sister and brother tabbies but have very distinctive personalities. Fanta is bold an gregarious, climbing onto your lap and exploring everywhere. Carmine is a bit shyer but wants you to come to him, often calling for your attention across the room. Both love the run and play and nap together as needed.

Enzo is all that

Enzo is a textbook-perfect tuxedo kitten, with a big pink nose and playful energy. He loves to dash back and forth around the room, will chase any and every toy and loves a good petting. His personality will continue to grow as he does.

Maris, mysterious enchantress

Maris is our proper lady tux. She is wide-eyed and often a little fussy, but she loves to cuddle almost as much as she loves to play with her littermates. She will grow up to be a cat calendar model!

Speck is tiny but has a big personality

Speck is our tiniest kitten. She's got a scruffy but endearing look, her fur is still in that fuzzy-chick mode but she is growing fast. She is fun and has a feisty attitude that belies her small stature.

Tuttle, kitten nanny

Tuttle is a ginger tomcat from the same neighborhood as the kittens (he may even be father to some of them). He is a big boy but possesses a gentle soul; he acts as the kittens' nanny, watching over them and putting up with their pestering. He loves to be petted and held and asks for it in a soft voice. You can tell his time on the street was rough because he is very humble; he isn't always sure he deserves all the food and attention we give him. But of course he does! He deserves all this and more. Tuttle is FIV+ but is very healthy otherwise. He can be adopted to a home with other cats if they are friendly towards him or he can be adopted as a single cat.

 

 

Let's catch up! We have been busy with cats and landscaping projects (which are, not coincidentally, cat-related). We took a bunch of cats to the new Glendale, Queens, ASPCA spay/neuter clinic, the newly-opened facility that replaces the mobile clinics. In order to better provide mobile spay services to the public, the ASPCA decided to stop running concurrent vans for both regular folk as well as us feral cat enthusiasts. I guess it makes sense, but there is a big learning curve for the new system, for both us and the ASPCA.

Now instead of finding a mobile van near you, everybody has to get their cats to Glendale's stationary clinic. For many folks this makes the process much harder; for us, I am almost embarrassed to admit, this makes the process SO MUCH EASIER. Sorry, TNR people in the Bronx, Glendale is 10 minutes away from us by car.

The ASPCA is still working out other potential answers, such as their offer of transport to the clinic. But this is all a long way from being a workable solution. In the mean time, most of us are stuck with carting our cats to Queens. Which is what we did, joining forces with our friends to bring over 20 cats in.

We had 7 cats, 3 of whom we kept to adopt out. This is not something we take lightly; in fact, we were miserable at first to discover the cats we thought we feral all turned out to be tame as can be. Ferals are easy: fix em and put them back where you found them (okay it's not that simple but at least there's no litterbox to clean). Tame cats need homes.

So we found ourselves with 3 cats, 2 females and a male, all with very unique personalities. Violet is a mouthy tabby-on-white female who doesn't really get along with other cats. She bossed everybody around and demanded to be petted every moment we were with her.

Saratoga is a gentle, sweet young female we found in front of our local library. She was napping in the garden and was so tame she came right up to us and let me carry her home! She had a gross bite wound on her thigh but the ASPCA treated it with antibiotics so she healed fast.

Monserrat is a big tuxedo boy, but he had fallen on hard times. He was skinny and covered in scratches and scabs. Luckily it all seemed to be from a bad case of fleas and nothing more. He is also vocal and especially loves being held, a real rarity, even for the tamest cats.

Normally when I do write-ups like this here, it's part of the overall adoption campaign. But in this case, it's for posterity: all 3 cats have already been adopted! June is Pet Adoption month and for once the adopting public didn't disappoint. Within 3 weeks of just meeting these cats, they were all out of the house! It's the fastest turnaround ever for us. We're now looking at booking another clinic date but so far all the cats involved assure us they're either feral or already adopted. Sure they are.

Meanwhile we continue to prepare the backyard for Big Changes. For nearly 5 years, we have had no fence in our yard and we are finally doing something about it. In a few weeks we will have a tall cedar fence installed, and the garden within will also receive a big makeover. We hope to create a space both conducive to human enjoyment as well as cats'. To that end we're looking at planters and furniture, and every kind of outdoor cat entertainment we can cram into the space. It may take some time to build it up (and who knows what the cats will even think when they see the transformation) but by the fall we expect to have a serious feral paradise out back (and one that is hopefully less visible than things are now, we want to run a more clandestine operation here!)

Finally, nonprofit status is underway for us! Our group is planned to be called "Bushwick Street Cats" but the important thing is that nonprofit status will allow us to do more cat stuff, more often. I hope these cat realize what we're doing for them

Sorry boys, you'll have to stay on our side of the fence from now on!

And like that, they were gone.

Almost 3 months to the day of their arrival, the last of the colony kittens has gone to his new home. I can hardly believe we moved them all, especially some of the more 'difficult' ones (okay, Elmer).

After Eldert (now Bongo) was adopted, the next one to go was little Friday, the black & white cowgirl who was a few weeks younger than the others. She was adopted at a North Brooklyn Cats adoption event by a guy who had previously adopted from them. He was not only looking for a friend for his cat, he was actually getting married later in the day and had hoped to bring his new bride a special wedding gift of a new kitten. I tend to think of pets as gifts as a slippery slope but I think she's charming enough to claim her place in their new home.

Soon after that little Elsa found a home. Elsa had always been tame so she wasn't a hard sell, she was petite (and possibly younger than the other kittens) and had no fear of humans. In fact, she seemed to regard us with a grave curiosity that bordered on pity. She is reportedly very gregarious in her new home.

After the first 3 kittens were off we were left with the 3 more problematic kittens. All three were much more feral and less prone to human influence during their time indoors. But with the 'good' kittens gone, I could spend more time with the others. Slowly (and all at different rates) they came around.

Elvis was the first of this batch to be adopted. This was a real victory for us as Elvis had early been branded one of the hard cases. He hissed constantly and didn't seem to respond to any of the official taming methods. He was bigger than the others, so he too may have been from a different litter. He was sequestered in a small crate, which was supposed to speed the process. I don't know if it did but separation did seem to help. He never totally gave up the hissing but he revealed a very docile disposition that belied his menacing exterior. Eventually he let us pet him and increasingly seemed to like it. We were able to pick him up and hold him, he got pretty mushy all around and was soon picked up by a couple from Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

Elke went next. She too had a slower time of it, she was shy at first and only came out of her shell near the end. By then she was asking for head rubs and climbing all over us. She was the first to learn how to take treats from our fingers and remained the quickest of the group to pick up on similar obstacles. Once she got over the hump she liked to get up in your face as much as possible. She now lives in Crown Heights.

Last but not least is Elmer. Initially he seemed harmless and docile but he soon became aggressive and downright violent. As covered in-depth in the previous post, we were close to putting him out with the rest of the incorrigible ferals. But he made a stunning turnaround, and by the time his littermates were adopted, he was tamer than them! While Elvis and Elke were still a little skittish at times (especially around strangers), Elmer rapidly warmed up to everybody, allowed anyone to pick him and hold him, and would seek out laps to sit upon whenever he got tired of playing.

Before he left, Elmer was allowed out of his room to roam the house freely. He loved all the other cats and they seemed to like him (except Flossie), he ran around with them for a few days until it was his time to go. A previous adopter was interested and picked him up this past weekend. Reportedly her older cat isn't happy but I suspect the two will soon become pals (there's actually a good chance they're related since they're both from the same block and share a lot of the same personality traits).

With the kittens gone we can focus on the other cats, as we still have several to adopt out. We also have many more ferals to take care of now, as the recent TNR project resulted in most of the cats moving into our back yard. So I'm building a bunch of new winter shelters to make sure they're covered. I miss the kittens, but I'm glad to have a little more time to do other stuff again. It's been a rewarding experience but I am hoping this is the last time we see kittens on this block. There are still a few unfixed cats out there and we'll try to get them all fixed. But if another neighbor reveals they have 20+ cats in their yard, I'm moving.

Elmer imitates a penguin

The taming of the cat continues. We've now had the El-Word Kittens for over 2 months; 3 have been adopted, one sadly died, and 3 remain. They are getting big, as they are between 4 and 5 months old now. Their personalities have emerged, which will either make it harder or easier to part with them when the time comes. Of course with Elmer the tuxedo kitten, we'd have no problem unloading him. In fact, we thought we might have to put him out with the rest of the feral cats in the back yard. Until recently …

Elmer has been the hard case of the bunch. While each kitten had their own issues, he has constantly lagged behind the pack, with aggressive and injurious behavior to us handlers. While the other kittens were allowed to run around and play in their room, he had to remain in his cage for tedious lessons in NOT scratching and biting the hand that feeds him, and how humans are not actually here to torture and eat him. He wasn't getting it.

He hissed, he growled, he swatted when we came near. He knocked food out of my hand. It got so I couldn't get through a session without receiving a number of lacerations and puncture wounds (those little teeth are sharp!) It increasingly felt like one of those nuts who try to keep a wild animal (like a chimp or a beaver) as a pet; a time bomb waiting to go off. I didn't want to think about putting him out with the ferals, but it started feeling like a possible escape hatch.

I decided to give Elmer one week to turn it around. I wanted to give him one more chance using a new approach. I had been keeping him in a series of cages, but I now let him go in a small room. He was completely isolated from the other kittens and would see and interact only with me. He was very happy to be out of the cage, he loves to run around and even in the biggest cage he could only run so much. But this meant he could run away from me as well.

I thought I would try a simple conditioning exercise with him: I held some dry food in my hand, let him get the scent of it, then make him let me pet him before giving him a piece. It took him a while to get it, but soon he would let me run my hand over his head and back to receive a bit of kibble. Lucky for me he loves this dry food we get from Costco, he and the other kittens love it more than pretty much anything besides baby food.

After he mastered a basic petting, I got more elaborate, petting his tail, scratching his chin. He didn't always take kindly, occasionally swatting at me and running away. But he would always come back for that food. Somewhere during that week when he came up to let me pet him, he leaned into my other hand, rubbing his chin on it. This was a good sign, he was doing more than was asked. A couple days later he started purring while getting petted. Then I started experimenting with actually picking him up and holding him. to my surprise, he allowed it! Of course, as soon as the food ran out he was off to other things.

It's now been nearly 2 weeks and his progress continues but by bit. This morning I went in to feed him and he purred and let me hold him. I offered him a reward and he didn't want it; he just wanted me to pet him. Not only is this a big step for him, he's actually pushing past the other 2 kittens, who still regard us with suspicion. I've also been playing with him and he's very close to learning how to fetch his favorite toy mouse so I can throw it across the room. I can hardly believe this is the same cat that caused all these scratch marks (still healing) on my hands.

With a little more practice I think he will finally be ready to be put up for adoption. I wish I had thought of this approach earlier, and should I ever have to tame kittens again, you can be sure I will start with these methods). Elmer and the others are no longer tiny cute kittens, but small versions of their adult selves. I'm hoping we can find good homes for them soon, since 'Kitten' is such a commodity on the adoption circuit. But we've met so many good folks who have adopted cats of all ages from us, so sooner or late we will find the right ones. Of course sooner is preferred.

Eldert gets ready to move out

Kitten Taming 101 continues, and produces its first graduate! Eldert, as the orange tabby kitten was known, has been adopted! He is the first of the bunch to go to a new home, where he will live with two lady cats. I am hoping that at least 2 of the remaining kittens will be adopted out together but I have to admit, if we separate them they are more likely to tame properly.

Eldert was tough at first, growling up a storm and being a spitting, hissing jerk all day long. But once we put him in a cage by himself, within the week he was purring and rubbing his head against my hand. The separation, though tough at first, revealed to him that humans were okay after all. He has become one of the tamest kittens, certainly the tamest of the original bunch who seemed like such hard cases before. He still has some adjustments to make, but I think in a new environment, with loving humans and tame cats to model good behavior, he will figure things out quickly.

Meanwhile the remaining semi-ferals continue their progress, at various levels of success. Elvis, another hard case form Day 1, has made great strides in the past weeks, enjoying petting and allowing us to pick him up and hold him. He still hisses a little too easily but he's pretty much tamed.

Elke, on the other hand, who had been 2nd in terms of tameness, has regressed of late, and will need some extra attention (and possibly separation). She will come for food but doesn't want to be touched lately. It blows my mind, but I have to admit that Elvis is tamer than Elke right now! But I suspect she is just too smart for her own good, having realized that she doesn't have to 'play nice' to get fed.

Bringing up the rear is Elmer, who first seemed easily tamed, but took a sharp turn into sour-puss land. He's been living separate in his own cage for a while now, and is making baby-steps progress, but growling is still a daily occurrence.

Of course we have two other kittens, Elsa and Friday as she is now known. I don't include them in the ranking because they are already so tame they would throw off the curve. They were significantly younger than the others which is probably why they tamed up so fast. They provide the valuable service of showing the others how tame kittens get more fun and more treats. It seems to be working, if a little bit slowly.
Here's some video of the whole crew (sans Elmer) showing their new trick: taking food from my hands: