The mother cat kept the kittens in our shed long enough that they roam the neighborhood but always return to our shed. and it would kill me that I couldn’t help them. well, this morning I thought “I bet they would eat dog food” so I took a couple large cups of it out to the shed, they fled but they returned. I also gave them a large plastic trough of fresh water. It is so heart warming to see them come shyly up and feed and drink !
That’s cool! Is the mother cat a stray too?
It’s nice that you’ve started taking care of them but please get them spayed and neutered. If you don’t then you’re gonna have a ton of them running around, more than you’ll be able to handle. It happened to my sister’s cats. They were everywhere.
Cats will eat dog food…it’s basically the same ingredients as cat food but some has different flavors added, thats all…and its more expensive because its made into smaller pieces and fish shapes and stuff…
We took 10 cats & kittens this year and have 8 left… the 2 smallest kittens died but the one nursing mother was taking care of 2 litters…so was nursing 8 kittens!
yes Barbie the mother was a stray too. haven’t seen her anymore? It’s just the three cats. @Malvok saying getting them fixed and doing it is a harder problem than it may seem. I would love to shuck out $300 and get them all fixed but you’d have to trap them first. No, it looks like in a year there will probably be more cats. I have called animal control but they said as long as they aren’t in danger they can’t come.
There are places that do free or low cost spaying and neutering.
I am thinking because I’m out in the back yard all the time now smoking that they might tame. That would be ideal. Right now they flee when I approach to feed and water. but that could change. I don’t know, really. They are feral.
Yes it’s true. They can have babies 3 to 4 times a year. They can be cute but they need to be fixed. It’s a population issue .Lol.
I guess I better “get on the ball” then. haha
Some cats become anti-human and pass that onto their kittens. At this age it wouldn’t take much to change that. Probably your best bet is start making phone calls to get help and info from your local vet and animal shelters. Ask about getting them fixed for cheap\free etc while your ringing around.
I once took in a stray cat that was pregnant and had a hard time getting animal control to take the kittens.
Once I tried to help a women get a feral cat into a cage to get it fixed. I got scratched up pretty bad and didn’t succeed in getting it in the cage.
I have tried to find cheap services when I had my last cat. I tried calling so many places. Shelters, vets, animal control, SPCA. No luck. The wouldn’t even spade or neuter without me first paying for shots etc. I ended up having to put the cat to sleep.
Yes, Barbie it seems it’s going to be a real problem. thing is, I feel so good feeding and watering the cats I think I will just keep doing that and hope they will come up to me. I am in the back yard on 30 minute intervals and they already are not afraid to eat and drink while I watch them from the porch. they are black and white kitties. one has a black “cap” and is a boy I think. there is an very light orange kitten and the others are spotted black but mostly white.
I am sorry you had to put your cat down, that’s tough.
Wha? That’s mice! LOL…Cats normally have kittens once a year and maybe will go a second time. I had 3 - 4 female cats for 8 years and with all that only one cat one year got pregnant twice. Living in the wild I have not had to worry about overpopulation… never had more than 15 cats and that didn’t last long. Many kittens have died just of natural causes, rejected by the mother, killed by dogs, taken by wild animals, even a few of the adults have wandered off and never returned. I actually lost my last of the original cats and their offspring last winter and had to repopulate with 10 cats which is now 8 cats… we shall see how spring fares with pregnant mothers…
Can always give some away but that’s getting harder to do…I’ve only given away 2 in 8 years…
the old clan in 2009 holding steady at 7 cats
This is what I got from google. @e_lunaseer
An average cat has 1-8 kittens per litter and 2-3 litters per year. During her productive life, one female cat could have more than 100 kittens. A single pair of cats and their kittens can produce as many as 420,000 kittens in just 7 years.
Fun Facts - Fayette Humane Society
I have 6 indoor cats, 4 from the same litter, all strays, all spayed/neutered except the last one we got a year ago. It was running outside clinging close to it’s stray mamma, took me about 3months to get it inside, and I will not let it outside until it gets fixed.
This same mamma, turned up about 2months ago in our backyard with 4more kittens! eeek! Now I’ve got to somehow trap them and get them fixed as well before they make more babies. Saw the mamma cat last week, she is pregnant again! She looks so worn out, but she isn’t friendly, so don’t know how I’m going to trap her.
I’ve gone through 5 16lb bags of cat food last month. can’t afford to feed them all, but I can’t stand to watch them starve either.
I’ve had cats for many years. I have seen a max of 5 kittens and only that one time 2 litters in one year. most of the time they had 3 - 4 kittens. Now I suppose if the environment is right and a female goes into heat 3 times in one year she could have 3 litters. perhaps i’ve just been lucky but i hope for me it stays as it has been, LOL.
Where I live there are thousands upon thousands of street cats. They live in a kind of symbiotic relation with the people in the city. That means we put out scraps for them after we eat, they go through the bins without any interference from us, and they catch vermin. We have a whole family of cats living in the coal bunker under the house. Their numbers never seem to get too great. I suppose when it gets too crowded, they go off looking for new territory. People here think spaying and house training animals is cruel (but in the last few years they have started catching, spaying, vaccinating and microchipping street dogs, then they let them go to carry on with their happy street dog life!).
Another small addition to the discussion - cats will mate with their siblings, so if the litter is mixed gender, once they are sexually mature, they WILL begin to reproduce.
I once tamed 2 kittens. I slowly worked up to being able to touch them, and then hold them.
When I was in Soteria House a wild stray cat had a litter of kittens in our basement. They did not let humans get near them. Even as kittens if you got near them they would arch their back and puff up their fur to twice their normal size and hiss and scratch. The meanest counselor at Soteria, went down and captured 6 kittens somehow, put them in a burlap bag and tossed them in a river. I don’t know how that guy became a counselor doing stuff like that.
that sickens me. I’ve heard of people doing that before.