We got a foot of snow dumped on us this week. We shoveled out the cat paths so they have easier access to their shelters and food bowls. Here’s Dash acting coy and enjoying the easy route.Temperatures have also dropped dramatically and the outdoor cats are not eating as much wet food. They don’t show up on schedule anymore for meals. Dash even seems to prefer dry food only for now, so I just keep the outdoor dry food bowls stocked. Hopefully they’re hunkered down in their heated cat houses and don’t want to venture out unless they absolutely have to.
Here is Funny Face enjoying the snow and driving me crazy because he decided to sit under the bench in the catio rather than use one of the heated cat shelters in my yard.
TNR means caring for the outdoor feral cat colonies by providing food, water, shelter and medical care as needed after their spay/neuter surgeries and vaccinations.
TNR means reporting on and monitoring the outdoor cat colony numbers.
TNR means fostering and adopting out stray cats.
TNR means finding and helping animals in alleys and streets, including lost dogs and pet birds.
TNR means humanely euthanizing fatally ill or injured animals at a vet’s office.
TNR means talking to the public about the colony cats and helping with care for their own indoor pets.
TNR means finding cases of animal abuse and hoarding situations and doing something about it.
One of my trapping projects this past fall encompasses a lot of those things and shows what education and effort can do to help us all work together to ultimately help the animals.
Along with two other experienced caretakers, I trapped all week in an alley which started out with the residents coming out to yell at us and calling us “cat killers.” After some discussion, we figured out that they wanted the outdoor cats, and thought we were going to take them away permanently. During this we trapped a cat that was already ear tipped (TNR’d), showed them the ear tip, and let the cat back out. The people then started to trust us.
That week we trapped at least a half dozen other ear tipped cats and let them out, but also trapped five unaltered cats, which we took to the clinic to be fixed and vaccinated, and showed the residents each time that we were letting the cats back out in the same place.
These same residents are now advocates of ours and are trying to help us. They want to adopt any kittens that we might find. They are telling us about other places with cats outside. One person came out asking about surgery for his dogs so we provided him with low-cost spay/neuter information.
We also showed a group of concerned children what we were doing when they saw the traps. They were very excited by the idea, and talked to us about their pet cats.
One girl said she had a new pet kitten that “wasn’t eating” and took us into her home to show us. The kitten had not been weaned yet and they did not have any idea about kitten food. Another kitten there was lethargic and had a bulge on its side. We gave them information on low-cost clinics to look at the sick kitten, and then drove to Petsmart to buy the baby kitten some formula as it cannot eat the food they were trying to provide it.
That is how TNR works in a community. The more that people know about it, the more they will show you how much they care and want to help.
Those animals are also here because they’re feeding in our yards. The raccoons especially are visiting everyone – the feeders all tell me about them. It’s not just the cat food being left out, however. They feast on the fruit and vegetables grown in the gardens during the summer. In fact, I haven’t seen the raccoons on our block since the fall.
The institute said that coyotes are most prevalent after raccoons. I’ve never seen a coyote in the city, but a friend of mine sent me this photo of a coyote on her block, mid-afternoon, on her busy city street, chasing a cat. At this point, cats relocated to barn homes do not just have to worry about being killed and eaten by coyotes. Coyotes apparently are everywhere.
I’m really surprised that the Institute’s cameras did not take photos of any feral cats, or perhaps they did not want to address the subject. Or maybe these cats steer clear of the other wildife.
Instead they seemed to take pictures of everything else. Like, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Not really, but I couldn’t resist. I do have little lion cats, tabby tigers, and a cat named Bouncy Bear in my colony. She is the cutest.
Honey Bouncy Bear stays dry under the garden bench.
Here’s the article in full:
“LINCOLN PARK — Humans aren’t the only mammals that frequent Downtown.
Based on the results of a successful camera trap program that recently expanded into five Chicago high schools, the researchers at Lincoln Park Zoo‘s Urban Wildlife Institute have discovered two other mammals that routinely roam the city’s streets, parks, alleys and lakefront.
“Raccoons are everywhere, by far the most urban-adapted species, and they’re followed right by the coyote,” said Mason Fidino, the coordinator of wildlife management for the Urban Wildlife Institute, which studies the interaction between urban development and the natural ecosystem.
“Whether you know it or not, if you’re taking a walk in the city, you’ve likely walked past a coyote,” Fidino said. “Most of the time you just can’t see them.”
The issue with not seeing them led to the creation of the camera trap program, which began in May 2010. The institute installed infrared camera traps, which sense an animal’s heat and motion, along three transects — or sampling lines — that start Downtown and head out of the city.
There are 41 camera traps within city limits, and all are near the transects, which run along the Chicago River heading northwest, Roosevelt Road running due west, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal going southwest. The exact locations of the camera traps were not revealed because the devices are sometimes stolen or vandalized, Fidino said.
The last 3½ years of study have led to about a million camera trap photos, plus multiple discoveries of where mammals live within Chicago and how close they’ll wander to Downtown, Fidino said.
Among the findings:
• Besides raccoons and coyotes, opossums are the mammals that come closest to the city’s epicenter. Opossums will travel into areas like Humboldt Park, Wicker Park, Lakeview, North Lawndale and Bridgeport, but they won’t go into Downtown because they tend to like more green space.
A camera trap is installed by Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute at an undisclosed location in Lincoln Park. The institute has 41 camera traps installed within city limits. View Full Caption
Lincoln Park Zoo/Urban Wildlife Institute
• Deer, red foxes and skunks — the striped stink-sprayers were considered the “least urban” mammal — were almost never photographed by the camera traps except on the Northwest Side in neighborhoods like Edison Park, Jefferson Park, Albany Park and Forest Glen. Fidino said they also are in Far Southwest Side neighborhoods including Beverly and Far Southeast Side locales like Hegewisch, but the institute hasn’t installed camera traps in those places yet.
• The city’s river system and railway corridors are by far the primary wildlife gateways into the city.
• Animals have adapted their lifestyles to the urban environment. For example, coyotes in rural locations are usually most active at dusk and dawn, but in Chicago they do most of their hunting overnight.
“When animals are living in the city, a lot of their paradigms break down,” said Liza Lehrer, the institute’s research coordinator.
Fidino and Lehrer consistently add more camera traps. Ones recently installed near Montrose Harbor and Jackson Park photographed coyotes. They’d also like to create other transects that run through other Chicago neighborhoods.
The institute, in conjunction with the Hurvis Center for Learning Innovation and Collaboration, this fall launched a yearlong “Partners in Fieldwork” program with five Chicago high schools — Amundsen, Manley, Providence St. Mel, Taft and George Washington — in which students have set up camera traps outside the schools. The students’ camera trap results will be incorporated into the data the institute already has collected, said Sharon Dewar, Lincoln Park Zoo’s director of public relations.
“The goal is for the students’ data to be usable for our scientists,” Dewar said.
Fidino said the objective of the entire camera trap project is to understand what types of habitats attract wildlife and what kinds of wildlife are living in the city.
Lehrer said she’s been amazed by the animals that can be found within Chicago, even if the cameras haven’t captured them on film. She’s seen a mink at the North Park Village Nature Center, and she said that even beavers occasionally traverse into these parts.
“We’re only going to start seeing more and more wildlife in the city, and we’ll need to be able to coexist with them,” she said.”
The opossum came back last night for a holiday treat. Even the colony cats have a dysfunctional family for the holidays!
He stayed for a photo shoot, and did not mind the flash. He is only interested in the dry cat food. I left it out late last night since I was having dinner at my family’s house. He’s a messy eater.
I never quite noticed the Doggy Style logo before on the pet bowl. That’s hysterical. I think I’m going to name him Doggy. It’s a lot easier to spell than opossum.
But I don’t want to encourage him to rely on cat food. I found this article on The Humane Society’s site about how to gently discourage opossums from coming to your yard. Although, I am very interested in the part about them eating slugs and insects from the garden. I could use help with that this summer.
Here’s the article:
“A gentle wild neighbor, the opossum is our only marsupial and is rarely guilty of more than “playing ‘possum.”
Opossums get a bum rap. They often get blamed for things that they don’t do—like tipping over garbage cans. (It’s most likely the neighborhood dogs or maybe an energetic raccoon who provides a nice smorgasbord which the opossums enjoy, too.)
But like the kid who doesn’t run as fast as some of the others, they are the ones always getting caught.
Opossums usually don’t get into garbage cans or gardens, but they might stop to clean up the mess left by other wayward critters, and get the blame. The have been accused of killing chickens, but that happens very rarely. Most people complain about opossums just being there, rather than for any problems they cause.
If there is an opossum in the yard, don’t worry. He is not a threat, and more than likely he will be moving on in a short while. The best way to keep them from visiting is to have tight-fitting lids on garbage cans, and not to leave any pet food outside overnight. Remember to pick up any fruit that has fallen from trees.
But far from being a nuisance, opossums can be beneficial for your garden, eating snails, slugs, insects, and sometimes even small rodents. They’ll even clean up spilled garbage as well as that fallen fruit off trees.
Opossum are not aggressive, although their open-mouth, defensive hissing may make them appear that way. But they are only bluffing and trying to look vicious as a defense. And if that doesn’t work they play dead when really scared!
The best way to keep opossums from living under a deck or patio is to make sure they cannot get there in the first place. To find out if an opossum has moved in, loosely fill the hole with soil, leaves, straw, or crumpled newspaper. If she is in there, the opossum will push her way out and reopen the hole. If nothing happens for two or three nights, it is safe to assume that no one is inside, and hole can be filled.
To keep an opossum out that has moved in, wait until she leaves her den (two hours after dark is generally a safe time). Then loosely close the opening with netting, straw, or other fibrous material that an animal trapped inside can push away, but one outside will not bother to disturb to get back in. Opossum moms take their kids wherever they go, so there is not much chance that any babies will be left behind. But always check for youngsters before closing the opening.
Every now and then, an opossum will get into a house through a pet door. Provide them a way out by closing the doors to all rooms and open the doors to the outside. Opossum are usually not aggressive, so you may be able to help them on their way by gently nudging them with a broom.
People often mistake the open-mouth hissing and drooling behavior of opossums as a sign of rabies. However, this is just a bluffing behavior that opossums use as a defense mechanism and does not indicate a sick animal. In fact, rabies is extremely rare in opossums, perhaps because they have a lower body temperature than other warm-blooded animals.”
My neighbor just spotted the Anti-Cruelty Society van again outside the hoarder/drug house of the indoor Stealers Wheel Colony. It sounds like they may be closer to getting all of the animals out of there. I will share the news if that happens. It’s been over a year since I was told about this house and tried to help, but I’m always hoping we are getting closer to a resolution.
This same neighbor has been reporting this house for years to the alderman because of the number of animals inside, the filthy condition it is in, and the fact that it appears there are drugs there as well. A few months ago she saw the “owners” of these cats giving away kittens outside. I once again called Anti-Cruelty Society, Chicago Animal Care and Control, and Cook County Animal and Rabies Control.
The last time I was inside it was hard to keep track of the cats. They swarmed the food.
They swarmed the new litter boxes we brought.This is what the original litter boxes looked like. So there was also feces all over the floor, even though the cats still tried to use the boxes.
I counted sixteen cats, two birds, and one chihuahua, but I also could not get into three of the rooms because the doorways were blocked. The cats could go in and out of them so it was possible there were even more cats hiding from me.
Last year my neighbor Kim and I managed to TNReturn eight of the cats at Anti-Cruelty Society and using vouchers at PAWS Chicago’s low-cost vet clinics. Kim also ended up having to foster and adopt out two of the cats. Once these cats were out of that house you could see they were friendly and adoptable.We had to stop rescue efforts because the “owners” started arguing with us and the situation got dangerous. If nothing transpires soon, I’ll keep calling everywhere again. Once the animals are out then maybe someday the people there can also get the help they need.
A few days ago I called to check in with my neighbor, Kim. I met Kim in 2009 and she is known here in our neighborhood as the “Dog Lady.” Kim is the type of animal rescuer that will jump fences to save dogs from starving and freezing because of neglectful owners, and will take in an animal if you bring it to her door. We first met because my next door neighbor agreed to relinquish his sick dog to her since he could no longer afford to provide care. Kim and I talked about outdoor cats and trap-neuter-return, something that she had not tried before.
We didn’t always agree on how to go about rescuing the animals we encountered, and we’ve even argued, but last year I felt we finally gained a tentative mutual respect and understanding when we tackled the indoor Stealers Wheel Colony together. Kim found that house because she is always walking her dogs in this area, talking to the neighbors about their pets. Kim called every rescue group she knew to help get the 16+ cats out of that house. When I heard about it, I called her and said I would help, and her response was to laugh and say, “Well, sh*t, you’re the only one that called me back, Vanessa. I wasted my time because I could have just called you myself.”
When we went to try to get the cats at the Stealers Wheel house, Kim always brought food and litter for the cats, and brought groceries and medicine for the people there. She tried to clean and fix the house. The house is a wreck, and the people inside are most likely addicts, and I felt trying to help them was hopeless. It was certainly thankless – we just got yelled at a lot. And it was dangerous. I only wanted to try to help get the cats out of there. Kim, on the other hand, tried to fix everything, and I admire her for the effort, even if I didn’t agree with the method. Anyways, we did the best we could with that situation, but ultimately could not handle it on our own. One of the few things we managed to do is she fostered these two cats from there and got them adopted out together.
Kim with the Stealers Wheel house cats and foster dog.
I called Kim a few weeks ago because I now may have another solution for the cats there, and wanted to see if she had been there lately. She called me back to let me know that she hasn’t been to the house since last winter. She also let me know that she was diagnosed with terminal cancer just recently, along with other ailments, and the doctors sent her home because there was nothing else they could do for her. It was hard for me to keep track and understand everything she was saying, but one thing I latched on to is that she said a man came with a dog to her house last week and she had to turn him away.
I’ve never seen Kim turn an animal in need away and put herself first. She just cannot handle more animals at this time, and is currently trying to re-home her two dogs and four cats.
Kim doesn’t want help from me because she said there is nothing that she needs or that anyone can do. I feel helpless because we’ve only interacted mostly during rescue situations, never socially, but will try to reach out to her again. Please send healing thoughts her way.
Hi Lynne – No, this is a very new development as she was just diagnosed. I will update if/when I know more. Thank you for your concern! When I talk to her I will be sure to let her know about the people who are reaching out here. Vanessa
Here’s Dash enjoying fresh, clean, room-temperature water outside in sub-zero weather thanks to the magic of my outdoor outlets. There’s another heated water dish behind him with a bowl of wet food kept warm inside. You can see the electric cord running out of his cat house, connected to a heating pad that the cats can lay on. I’ve got two other cat houses also with heating pads plugged in. I TNR’d Dash in 2007 and this is his first winter with warming pads. He seems to be thoroughly enjoying it and stays in my yard a lot longer now. The cats don’t even touch the electric cords. I’m glad I finally upgraded to electricity, but it was time because the outdoor cats here are losing a lot of shelter in my area. There’s construction being done for a new park and lots of vacant homes are being torn down.
I’m thinking I should wrap holiday lights around this set-up and maybe even add a Nativity scene.
Temperatures have also dropped dramatically and the outdoor cats are not eating as much wet food. They don’t show up on schedule anymore for meals. Dash even seems to prefer dry food only for now, so I just keep the outdoor dry food bowls stocked. Hopefully they’re hunkered down in their heated cat houses and don’t want to venture out unless they absolutely have to.
Hami 
kathy gorenz 
Allison