Thank you to Lisa M for her generous donation of an outdoor cat house and supplies!

Lisa shipped a Feral Cat Barn from Feline Furniture, along with half a dozen purr pads, a bottle of calming Feral Flower Formula, and the cutest cat card.

Everyone’s generosity and donations help us keep helping more cats. There’s no way we could keep doing this without your support. All of these items will be distributed to TNR’d cat colonies here in Chicago.

My cat Mooha helped unpack. She was especially obsessed with the shipping box, of course, but she also wanted to climb the cat house and remind us who’s top cat here. 

Every year we celebrate National Feral Cat Day by cleaning out the outdoor cat houses.

As always, Mooha inspects everything.

The garage turns into a Feral Cat Shelter and Feeding Station Factory assembly line. If you need outdoor cat shelters or feeding stations, hit me up at [email protected]

First come, first serve. Hope everyone had a great day!

If you can swing it, I highly recommend buying your own humane Tru Catch traps for TNR projects. You can try to fundraise specifically for them, and they are also on sale at certain times of the year.

It’s almost impossible to rent out a bunch of traps quickly in Chicago, and when you’re starting to trap a new colony, it’s a lot easier to trap a colony all at once, instead of one or two cats at a time. On average, a colony here in Humboldt Park is around 8-12 cats before TNR, in most alleys with a feeder. Sometimes a colony can be only 2-3 cats, or up to two dozen. One or two may be pregnant. A few cats may be sick. And there may be a few kittens that need to be socialized ASAP. The weather could change and make it impossible to trap. Also, a feeder sometimes changes their mind if the trapping process is taking too long. Time is of the essence with TNR. It helps to be prepared.

I learned all of that once I started TNR’ing for other people. It became apparent very quickly that it was easier for me to show up with enough traps for all of the cats quickly after I first talked to the feeder. That way they didn’t even have time to hesitate. I bought my first round of traps.

And expanded from there, including the Fat Cat Trap that Mooha was happy to demonstrate.

And now I have a decent supply of traps ready for use anytime in the garage.

In the meantime I also always stockpile carriers, newspapers, various bait, feeding lids/bowls, trap covers, blankets and towels in the garage for these projects.

Everything came in handy last night – I helped TNR a colony with two other rescue friends, Heather and Melissa. The colony is a mix of 17 cats and kittens. Armando, the feeder, also came out to help, and the process went quickly. We trapped nine cats within an hour. The rest of the colony is made up of seven kittens just a few weeks old that require additional vet care. We just learned about this colony a few days ago, and decided to go for it immediately because we were told some of the cats were pregnant. Being prepared with our own supplies paid off.

Just because I’m out of town doesn’t mean I stop thinking about the cats. Jim totally understands this, and accepts it for the most part. At this point he gives me updates without me even asking first. These past few weeks have been full of updates from him:

“The Feral Villa has arrived.” Which means he will assemble it. He even suggested we make a video of that. Stay tuned.

“The outdoor heating pad is here.”

“Dice ate dinner.”

“Dice didn’t eat dinner but all of the food is gone.” Dice is clearly sick so Jim knows I’m especially worried about him.

“Popcorn was eating the food in front. This time he jumped over the fence when he saw me.” Popcorn got his name because he slammed right into the fence once when he saw us, and then wouldn’t stop trying to escape from the trap when I TNR’d him. Popcorn was not injured in both cases, and it sounds like TNR made him smarter.

It’s nice to have someone hold down the feline fort while I’m gone. He also created this web site for me, and does the heavy lifting projects, like cleaning and organizing the feral cat supplies in our garage, and building outdoor cat houses. There’s nothing hotter than a guy with a soft spot for the animals. Our indoor pet cat, Mooha, has learned how to exploit that soft spot to her fullest advantage.

Here they are bonding over their mutual love of cheese.