How does one go about trapping feral cats?
Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at
7:59 am
Where do I get a trap? How do I take the cat to be fixed? Can I request that they be released in an area away from where I live? Anything else I need to know would be greatly appreciated!!!
Filed under: Cat Behavior
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There is a vast difference between a feral cat and a stray cat and most people, a great many people, think that any cat outside who does not seem to have a home is a feral cat – that is quite incorrect.
You can look at the dictionary definition of "feral" but what you find is not what is really meant when the word is used to refer to a cat.
A feral cat is one which was born and raised without any contact with humans. As a result of this and because their mother has taught them, by example, to treat humans as threats to be avoided at all costs, they do whatever is needed to avoid and get away from humans.
If a feral cat is cornered with no means of escape or is grabbed by a human, they will fight, tooth and nail to escape – I know from experience, I’ve been bitten twice by feral cats before I learned all the stark realities of feral cats and how you must handle them with traps, thick arm’s length handling gloves, squeeze cages, sedatives, and sometimes, nets.
A stray cat is one who once had a home with humans but no longer does, for one of several reasons. The cat may have gotten out and become lost. The cat may have been dumped – a lot of pregnant cats are dumped simply because they become pregnant – or the cat may have been abandoned or left behind when the owner moved.
For whatever reason, a stray cat no longer has a home with humans.
Depending upon the particular cat, how long they have been out on their own, whether nor not they have had any bad experiences with humans since it has been out on its own, and other factors, some of which we may not even know about, can make bringing a stray back "in from the cold" (as I like to put it) very difficult.
However, bringing a stray back in from the cold is almost always easier than taming a feral cat and it depends very heavily on the age of the feral kitten when the attempt at taming it is begun.
Kittens younger than about 6 weeks are usually easy to work with and can be sufficiently tamed to be considered almost like kittens who had humans in their lives from the first day of those lives. It depends on the kitten. Some kittens younger than 6 weeks might never be completely tamed and kittens older than 6, maybe up to 12 weeks, might be easily tamed.
As the feral kitten gets older, it becomes harder to tame them until they reach a point where it become pretty much impossible to tame them at all.
Two of the people who have posted answers so far do not seem to understand about feral cats Their answers speak of the benefits of feral cats (what are those?) or re-homing them and such.
You can’t re-home a feral cat, it has never had a home. What benefits do feral cats provide – most people consider them nuisances, small or large, that are to be dealt with however is necessary.
If you decide to trap some cats and they are truly feral, you can take them to a vet to have then neutered if you wish But unless you get in touch with a feral cat organization who can pay the vet, you will wind up paying for the surgery yourself and you will be responsible for them after the surgery.
You also need to make arrangements with the vet ahead of time. You have to be sure he or she is willing to work with feral cats – some vets aren’t or don’t have the correct equipment. Since you can’t predict when you will catch the cats, you have to set up an agreement where you can drop off the trap, with the cat, whenever you catch it.
If the cats you trap are older feral cats, you aren’t going to be able to find homes for them except with people or organizations willing and able to expend the effort and time to tame them sufficiently to have someone adopt them as a pet – such people or organizations are generally impossible to find if the cat is older than just a few weeks.
Say you trap an eight month old feral cat and have it neutered or spayed. All of the handling necessary at the vet’s, until the cat is fully sedated, will need to be done with thick, arm length handling gloves and squeeze cages that allow the animal to be squeezed tight up against one side of the cage so that they can be given a sedative injection.
After the surgery, after the anesthesia has worn off, your are going to have a wild cat on your hands. Not some cat that you can give to a shelter to be adopted by some nice family as their family cat. What do you do with the cats after the surgery?
I don’t know about all shelters, but I do know about a few around here and, if a feral cat is judged to be too old to tame, it will likely be euthanized the day it is brought in or at the next euthanasia season if individual euthanasiaes are not done.
Most of the shelters of which I know about, do not have the time, facilities, personnel, or money to keep a cat who may require the work of one person, several hours a day, for weeks or months on end and may never tame to the point that it could be placed for adoption.
I said the work of one person because, in the cases I know about from personal experience and have read about, there is generally more success with taming feral cats if only one person works with the cat. Devoting such attention to a feral for an uncertain outcome is just something the shelters cannot do because of their limited staff and if it is a volunteer who works with the feral cat, few volunteers can be there every day, day in and day out.
The liability issue alone is enormous – if a shelter put up for adoption a cat it knew to be feral, no matter how tame they think it might have become, they would be liable if the cat attacks someone.
So, if you get a trap – you call some shelters and see if you can borrow or rent one – and set it to trap cats and those cats are feral and they are older than about 3 or 4 months old, those cats may be considered untamable and will be euthanized by many, if not the majority of shelters. Before you pay for neutering surgery yourself, you need to find out what you are going to do with the cat after surgery.
One person answering your question says that vets will try to adopt them out – not if they are feral cats. If only for the liability issue I mentioned above, vets are not going to try and find homes for feral cats.
I recommend, very strongly, that before you do anything about these cats, you go to Google and do a search on:
feral OR stray cats city state
Put the word OR in upper case as I show it and replace city and state with your city and state.
You should found organizations that deal with ferals and strays in your area. Get in touch with them and fully explain your situation – it sounds to me that there are some cats in your neighborhood which you want relocated – that’s what I read from between the lines of your question.
Talk to the people at the organizations and let them tell you the facts and truths about dealing with feral or stray cats before you take another step about this.
feralcats.com, see if they are in your area. if not call the animal shelter to see if there is a local feral cats group. they provide cages and neuter for release. many people are unaware of the benefits feral cats provide. you can also try alleycats.com
We got a live cat trap at home depot and took them to the vet to have them fixed but they made up take and re-home the cats afterwards as they said it was our problem…so you will probably have to go about findign the cats home…sadly though if you give them to a rescue if they are proven to be to wild they will be put down.
Here is some stuff you’ll need:
You need a medium-sized Havahart trap, some shelters will let you take one if you leave a deposit.
Sardines or tuna
Towel
Transportation
Helpers
Very safe place to keep caged cat before bringing to vet
Vet who knows what you are up to, plus after hours #
This applies to strays not truly feral cats who are wily buggers. I spent some nights out watching traps for some rescue people and I learned tremendous respect for both feral cats and the people who sit out in ditches, behind dumpsters, and in tall weeds in every kind of weather, with nowhere to pee, for hours trying to trap same…month after month.
I will try to find some internet info for you but I really think your best bet is to call your local shelters and ask.
Update: I found this site, and there are more. I googled trapping feral catshttp://www.feralcat.com/trapinst.html
Whatever you decide to do, make sure you have it planned out in advance with a vet. Tell the vet everything about your project!
You should try re-posting this. I am not sure when the feral cat people are most likely to be here but there are a few of them at least.