December 6, 2010 – 3:49 pm
With the kittens out of the house I have more time to obsess over whether or not our feral cats are warm enough. It just started snowing this morning so I'm glad I spent the weekend working on our new project: reusable insulating beds for the outdoor shelters. Or, "Sleeping bags for cats." (more…)
September 30, 2010 – 1:15 pm
Nifty shows off his new home in our yard
The Eldert Street TNR cats have all been released … in our yard.
We had been thinking that our neighbor was overly burdened with cats she wasn't even sure she wanted, so we decided it was worth the gamble to release the cats in our yard. The cats, although territorial, should be able to figure out where they were from and could decide if they wanted to stay with us or go home. (more…)
August 9, 2010 – 11:14 am
Mugsy from 2008
Last Sunday night/Monday morning, our feral cat Mugsy was hit by a car and killed. It's been pretty rough this week, coping with the news and trying to make sense of it. Those of you familiar with what we do and this cat in particular know this is no regular loss of cat. (more…)
Some of our ferals
An issue that doesn't get much attention in the feral cat world is what to do with feral cats as they age. There is necessarily a focus on getting the word out about TNR and getting the community to accept it as the only reasonable solution to the feral cat problem, but not much is heard about what happens after that. (more…)
November 13, 2008 – 4:13 pm
First of all, I'm happy we voted that Obama guy into the Presidency. I hope it's a real omen of good things to come. I think the first thing he should do in office is replace all these 'panicky investors' with some guys of stronger constitution. I mean, every day I read in the paper that the Dow has just dropped another 600 points because "nervous investors worried about a bleak economic forecast" or whatever. Who are these losers? Find some folks with some serious brass balls and get rid of these wimps! Problem solved.
Meanwhile, my own efforts to lighten the public's burden, trapping feral cats and getting them fixed, has resumed. We picked up a few in Bed Stuy last week, not a great haul but a few are better than none. We'll have to go back, as there are a ton of cats in this neighborhood. We really only caught a bunch of rather tame street cats, not much of a challenge really. But we didn't have a great trapping spot, so we had to try to do it literally on the street corner. In retrospect I guess we did better than one might expect, considering.
This weekend I'll be trapping in Ft Greene behind a library, which should be more fruitful as long as the weather isn't too horrible. We'll be able to leave the traps alone for several hours, which should produce better results. After the get fixed and vaccinated, we let them recover for a few days before returning them. Then ideally, they go back to their lives as before; they just don't make any more cats.
Which brings me to my other hobby: building cat shelters. Does anybody live near a fish market? On trash days, walk by and see if they're tossing out any of those long Styrofoam packing boxes, these make good cat shelters. There's a fish market near me but they don't seem to be going through these as fast as I'd like, so I only have one so far. But you basically cut a hole in it and stuff it with straw and voila. It's not the best cat house, but it'll do!
