Fixing Half A Cat Colony Is Like Being a "Little" Pregnant

“We have been so pleased with the results from the TNR program. It has been a healthy year with only adults present. Often the kittens (before TNR) were sickly and too wild to provide care, resulting in terminal disease. The population has stabilized now with individuals staying around instead of roaming and getting hit in the road. We have two new additions to our colony that need spay/neuter vouchers. The new arrivals have been eating here consistently for the last three weeks.“

Feedback like this on our Managed Feral Colony Assistance Program is music to our ears. This Ann Arbor caregiver followed through and fixed her entire barn colony of 16 cats late last fall, and has been reaping the benefits ever since. It’s relatively simple to achieve 100% sterilization if you train the cats to show at the same time each day and be hungry when they do – by meal-feeding and not leaving food out for extended time periods. That way you see all the cats most of the time – and even the most feral cats will be more trusting -- you become their “mom cat” --- providing their food like she did.

We’re delighted to pay to sterilize cats where the colony caregiver – who is also the property owner – is committed to maintaining their land as a kitten-free zone – by humanely caring for the adults and ensuring the entire group gets fixed quickly – even when it involves live-trapping feral cats. It’s a two-stage process: first fixing the existing colony and second monitoring the group at meal time. Most of the time the existing colony will keep newcomers from settling in but occasionally a new cat will come by that they accept. When they do, identify the newcomer(s)and fix them before they reproduce.

As this caregiver points out – colonies of sterilized outdoor cats tend to be healthier – males no longer getting infections from scratches and bite wounds -- caused from fighting with other unsterilized male cats -- and females are stronger -- no longer diverting their energy to one or more litters of kittens each year. Kittens born outdoors before a colony is fixed can often be socialized and placed in good indoor homes – but only if the mother lets you handle them before they turn 8 weeks old. If not – as the caregiver points out – they stay feral and their best option is to live in their outdoor colony. Although adult cats do as well as other wildlife living outdoors, kittens have a 50% mortality rate. Their immature immune systems can turn even routine health problems into life-threatening events – especially if they’re too feral to be treated.

Sadly, we sometimes provide spay/neuter funding to caregivers that for whatever reason can’t or won’t follow through to get their entire group of cats fixed. When they only partially fix their cats -- often the kittens but not the adults -- their efforts (and ours) are foiled. As this unfortunate caregiver points out:


“I had no cats until about a year ago, and then I found a female feral cat living in my wood shed with two kittens. I was able to catch them, but not her. Now she has had two more kittens. They desperately need to be fixed. Thank you for your help.”

Situations like this won’t get under control until the caregiver recognizes the futility of fixing only part of her group. She needs to go back to basics -- provide daily meals at the same time and place every day and then live-trap the adult(s) for her veterinary appointments. Her number of cats will grow and the situation will continue to spiral out of control until she does.

One Cat's Cage Is Another Cat's Oasis

When we first introduced you to Tasha last April she was managing her chronic health issues better – and longer – than anyone thought possible. She entered our Older Cat Program in 2001 when she was ten years old. At the time she looked reasonably healthy, but her blood work pointed to renal failure -- with a creatinine level of 6.2 (normal being 0.6-2.4) and a BUN of 80 (normal being 14-36). Because she was relatively young to have that level of renal failure -- and because her kidneys also felt bumpy -- we ran another test and confirmed that she had polycystic kidney disease (PKD) -- a congenital disease that displaces normal kidney tissue with cysts.

Unlike the chronic renal failure that often afflicts older cats, the progression of PKD is very gradual. This gave Tasha time to adapt to her loss of kidney function – and adapt she did -- becoming a master at making the most of the little kidney tissue she had left. Once we understood the problem, we began giving her SQ fluids several times a week to take some of the load off her kidneys. This worked and her kidney values went back in the normal range staying there for most of the last 8 years. Unfortunately as she continues to age she’s picked up some of the other geriatric problems cats get – including hyperthyroidism, high blood pressure and anemia. Tasha is a very willing patient and responds pretty well to treatment so even with the number of illnesses she has, she’s done pretty well.

Recently, though, we’ve sensed a decline in her health. She began sleeping under a chair – where before she would have slept on the chair--hiding is never a good sign. And, I noticed a sour odor coming from her mouth when I give her pills. Since mouth odor is often a sign of end-stage kidney disease I took her to the vet for evaluation. We did new blood work and confirmed her kidney disease is worse and so is her anemia. We’re trying to get them both under control by giving new medications and increased fluid therapy. The mouth odor doesn’t appear to be kidney-related because the values weren’t extreme enough to cause it. But, during the exam we found two growths – one in her abdomen and another on her backbone. If they’re cancerous, they could relate to the odor. Neither are painful to the touch, but diagnosis is difficult given Tasha’s other health problems. And treatment – if they’re cancerous -- would be futile given the state of her overall health. Because of this we’ve decided not to put Tasha through the discomfort of biopsies and further diagnostics.

We’ve pulled a cat condo out of storage and put it in our living room in the area where Tasha spends most of her time. She has her food, water, litter box and bed within a confined area – saving her from exerting herself more than necessary. We keep the condo door ajar when we’re around so she can come out if she wants – but when she does, it’s typically just to sleep on the bed on top of her condo. After awhile she returns to the inside alternating between the beds. When we’re away or sleeping, we confine her to the condo to prevent unintended litter box lapses. She sleeps a lot, eats a little and looks generally comfortable in her own private home. We hope she continues to rest and enjoy the remainder of her time.

It took me almost two weeks to set the condo up – intellectually I know the condo is a comfort for her but emotionally I feel like I’m caging her – restricting her freedom. Now seeing how comfortable she is in her there, I wish I would have set it up sooner – to me it may be a “cage”, but to an elderly, ill cat, it’s an oasis.