Love Pallas Cats.
They have a couple at Banham Zoo. Lovely animals😊
Eight? Eight?! That is a lot of cat food/litter😯
Our cat Margot is usually not bothered by telly but she sat with us on Sunday, fascinated by Frozen Planet II for some reason. Not sure whether it was the polar bears ice skating or the doomed seal pup but she was loving it.
True, but TBF, the first pair, Sukie & Sasha arrived at the Turn of the Century**, and there’s only ever been four max at a time.
However, the cost of food & litter pales into insignificance when compared to vets’ bills (especially at EOL), even taking into consideration life-long insurance payouts.
**cue one of my favourite songs by Yes
A bit harsh on the stoodents………
I know exactly how she felt. We lit the fire for the first time that evening and 2 of our 3 cats were in front of it in no time😂
Ah sorry I missed the bit at the end. Thought you had a house full!
Two Siamese + two Burmese (or 1 + 3 in later years) is indeed a house full!!
The good folks at Flashback Cables (remember them?) had thirteen!
The two Burmese that we have at the moment are “an island of peace amid chaos”…or maybe not.
I think we need another one….or two.
Breaking News:
Sheaffer the feral cat has been captured, safely placed into a secure basket, and taken to the Vets.
…all going well, he will return here tomorrow.
Could Sheaffer be chipped ?
Think that might be his testimonials.
They will check as a routine at the vets, but it is very unlikely he is ID chipped.
Sheaffer is not owned by anyone, he’s a village feral, and expert at hunting, and sneaking in though an open cat flap to scavenge food.
When i collect him tomorrow, i’ll give him a good feed, and let him go.
It will take a couple of weeks for his testosterone level to drop and for the adjustment his mindset, he may then choose the easy life of domestication with someone.
He is welcome to move in with us if he chooses.
Is a rooming free feral cat a good idea.
IIRC, I’ve posted before that my aunt took in a feral cat, which took a couple of years in getting her from the garage eaves in to the house. Turns out the puss had absconded as a kitten and the ‘owners’ now lived ~30 miles away, having moved from the area. Initially, they expressed thoughts about having moggy back but reality dawned, and the cat stayed with my aunt (at great expense in vets’ bills it must be said).
It’s not a good idea, they fight viciously with other male cats, risk of infections, they sex-pest or fornicate with females, can cause unwanted kitten births, and if you leave a door open for 2 minutes they come in and pee - which stinks the house out.
Feral cats don’t usually live to see old age, life is very tough for them.
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
I understand the animal charities over here are inundated with surplus cat & dogs, part due to the lockdowns, when many people acquired pets. The cat charity lady I talk to (local charity) is of the view that all cats should be ‘done’ unless there are very strong reasons not to, as the number of litters found sheltering in garden sheds and alike has created so many issues.
The mainstream cat charities (in the UK = Cat Protection League), while having wonderful TV/media adverts, can only scratch the surface and, in no way, manage the scale of the challenge.
Several years ago we had a monster feral ginger tom roaming the hamlet here. One morning I took a call from a neighbour telling me that she had it trapped in her kitchen and did I have a cat basket so that we could invite the local vet to attend to its necessaries.
When I arrived with the basket said lady and her husband shut me in the kitchen with the beast and vanished.
Cut a long story short, I managed to catch tom, took him to the vet and had him seen to.
On return I left him in the barn with food and water expecting him to scarper. He spent a day in the barn then I found him curled up asleep in a cat bed in front of our Rayburn.
He became the most chilled out cat we have ever given a home to. Rarely venturing from his bed until he died several years later from pancreatic cancer.
You have been warned.
If a cat is actually feral that means it was born in the wild and had no human contact as a kitten. As a result they cannot be domesticated in adulthood and will not normally tolerate any human company or enter a house.
A cat that tolerates even the most cautious approach by a human is almost certainly a stray, not a feral, and has simply become lost, ill, or been evicted by its ‘owners’. It can still take a stray a very long time to accept an approaching human, but a feral simply won’t.
Definition on Wiki:
The meaning of the term feral cat varies between professions and countries, and is sometimes used interchangeably with other terms such as free-roaming , street , alley, or community cat . Some of these terms are also used to refer to stray cats, although stray and feral cats are generally considered to be different by rescuers, veterinarians, and researchers. The lines between stray and feral cat are diffuse. The general idea is that owned cats that wander away from their homes may become stray cats, and stray cats that have lived in the wild for some time may become feral.
and:
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, a feral cat is defined as a cat that chooses not to interact with humans, survives with or without human assistance, and hides or defends itself when trapped rather than allowing itself to be handled. Animal rescuers and veterinarians consider cats to be feral when they had not had much human contact particularly before eight weeks of age, avoid humans, and prefer to escape rather than attack a human. Feral cats are distinguished from domesticated cats based on their levels of socialization, ownership, and confinement, and on the amount of fear of, interaction with, and dependence upon humans. However, veterinarians and rescuers disagreed on whether a feral cat would tend to hiss and spit at or attack a human during an encounter, and disagreed on whether adult feral cats could potentially be tamed
Changing species, here in Gloucestershire there is debate over the term feral, not because of the so-called big cat around Stroud, but over the description of boar in the Forest of Dean. These boar are often called wild, but technically are feral because they are the offspring of domesticated / farmed animals released into the wild.