Recovering Sick Feral Cats
Sometimes feral cats need a little bit of recovery time BEFORE surgery.
Such was the case with Sydney. PAWS Chicago said she was a bit too sick with a URI to get spayed. They gave her a shot of Convenia, an antibiotic, and said she needed some time to get better.
Sydney was initially trapped last week by Cynthia, a woman who does a lot of TNR on the south side. Cynthia currently has a house full of foster cats, and did not have anywhere else to put Sydney. Sydney’s feeder is unable to recover cats. My friend George from Chicago TNR always tries to help Cynthia, and reached out to me.
I was happy to set Sydney up in the ingenious feral cat recovery lounge donated by Dave H. I’ve had multiple cats stay in the lounge and it has made my life, and theirs of course, a lot easier. You can connect a trap to the crate, which gives feral cats a lot more room during an extended stay.
It also gave me the chance to observe Sydney a bit more to see if she was truly feral. She is about eight months old so we wanted to see how she would act. I gave her a bed and some toys.
Sydney acted feral the entire time. She did not play, and tried to hide from me every chance. When I was cleaning the crate, she would go into the trap, and vice versa. Here’s what it looks like inside the lounge, and how she tried to stay away from me. The wood in the middle is an elevated platform with a cat bed for her to sleep on. The litter box goes underneath it. The food goes in the trap so that the cat is trained to go into the trap.
At this point she was also hissing and growling. She will be going to PAWS hopefully today for her TNR surgery. Her feeder is actually pretty attached to her, so perhaps she will warm up to him some more once she is spayed and returned to him.
I dropped her back off at George’s house yesterday. George greeted me with vegan chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. I’m always amazed at learning new things about my TNR friends. Today I learned she published a vegan cook book with her husband, David, called Veganopolis. And check out their blog! I need to order this book and try out some of the recipes.
Fingers crossed that Sydney’s surgery goes well, and she will be safely returned to her colony!