Cook County’s 2007 Managed Care of Feral Cats Ordinance is under fire from the Chicago Audubon Society and other anti-cat groups. Send a letter voicing your support of TNR to Cook County Commissioners with this online form from Alley Cat Allies. We have to stick together and stand up for the feral cats! There is a public meeting to address this issue scheduled for March 19th.
This is how you stand up and stick together!
Such is the case of the Stealers Wheel Colony stuck in the hoarder home in my neighborhood that I wrote about in December. When I was there I counted up to 16 cats, 2 birds and a chihuahua.
My original plan was to help this house get all of the cats fixed, and ultimately adopted or placed into shelters. Kittens are routinely being born and disappearing from here, cats are outside, and I’ve been TNR’ing a colony across the street from there since 2009. I don’t doubt some of those outdoor colony cats are from this house.
So, since December, I was able to TNReturn some of the cats there, and my neighbor managed to get two of them adopted out to other neighbors.
I was jogging by there in January and saw one of the ear tipped cats in the window.
I was excited to see him and he looked pretty good, despite the fact that he’s in a house filled with chaos, feces, and garbage stacked to the ceiling, while being fed sporadically and receiving no medical care.
Allen, one of the cats’ “owners” came out. He said that the cats that I fixed all got sick and died. When I asked about the cat in the window, he just said “except for that one.” Christina came out next. She appeared angry and I felt physically threatened by their behavior. They were accusing me of getting the cats sick, but at the same time asking me to come back and get them fixed and adopted out. It was scary and I decided I could not go back there alone, or even with help. My original plan was not going to work anymore. This had to be handled by authorities.
It has been very difficult to get a response here. Every local organization I can think of is aware of this house. Another organization called Triple R Pets that covers TNR outside of the city in the southwestern suburbs suggested I call Dr. Donna Alexander, the Administrator for Cook County’s Animal and Rabies Control. They said she will be able to help.
I called Dr. Alexander and got a response within two hours.
Chicago Animal Care and Control has been sent again to investigate further. The cats cannot keep breeding like this over there. Also, Christina and Allen need help. The house is not habitable for animals or people. I’m glad they all may finally get the help they need.
I’m thankful for Dr. Alexander’s expedient response so far. She is a rock star. She has a dog named Leroy Brown!
I hope I never encounter a house like this again in the future, but if I do, I now know who to call.
A raccoon visited my feral cat feeding station last night.
If you do not want to feed the other wildlife, set up a feeding schedule for your feral cat colonies. Cats will acclimate very quickly to your schedule, and it also makes it easier to trap them in the future for TNR.
In my case, I live right off the Bloomingdale Trail and Humboldt Park, so there is all kinds of wildlife around. I don’t want raccoons in my yard, though, because the cat food is not really good for them, and if they do get into a fight with one of the cats, the raccoon will always win. Thankfully the cats seem to disappear whenever one appears.
I was surprised to see this one because they normally visit my yard only in the summer because of my garden. They especially love the grapes that run along the entire length of one of my fences. They’re like monkeys hanging out in trees, so we added appropriate monkey music made by my alter-ego, Vansassa.
Last week I was talking to one of my favorite feral cat bloggers, Chicago Feral Cat Files, about feral cats who need extra recovery time after their TNR surgeries because they have other medical issues going on. Normally male feral cats can be returned outside after their surgery within 24 hours, and female cats can be returned after 48 hours. If a cat is recovering from a wound or a URI, however, and require antibiotics, their recovery time is obviously longer. In these cases we were brainstorming on how to keep the cats more comfortable.
Ideally cats that require more recovery time should be transferred into a larger cage so that they have room to stretch, eat, sleep and use a litterbox comfortably. I need to do some more research on these cages, but there are good options out there. One thing that I try to do for these cats is to line the trap with a puppy pad. The pads are more absorbent and comfortable for the cats to sit on rather than just newspaper, but they should only be used for cats that remain calm. Some cats like to shred and chew on everything in the trap, in which case the puppy pad is not a good idea.
But in the case of Boo, one of the cats I trapped in my yard, the puppy pad was perfect. She seemed to like how soft it was and only used a corner when she went to the bathroom on it.
PamPurrs Puppy Pads
Boo was TNR’d at PAWS Chicago in 2009. Her photo is also featured on PAWS Chicago’s Trap Neuter Return site. Boo turned out to be a pregnant female, which was so surprising to me as I rarely trap females from my yard, and she was so tiny. I named her Boo after seeing her for the first time the previous week looking out at me from inside my open basement door. I was outside gardening with the door open for hours. At some point she came into my house without me seeing her. When I did see her in the doorway, she bolted, and I did not see her again until I trapped her a week later late at night.
I recovered Boo in the trap for a few extra days with the puppy pads and she was good to go. Because she was so tiny, the trap did not seem that small for her. How do you keep the feral cats from your colony comfortable during their recovery time after TNR?
Hi,
I was just informed by Google that this page on your website actually had a broken link to our website, Tru Catch Traps. I noticed the link “but there are good options out there” is incorrect.
If you want to change the link, the new correct link would be: http://www.trucatchtraps.com/fc-rc
Or you can just drop the “.html” from the end of the current link.
Thank you very much!!!
An animal rescuer posted on Everyblock.com this week about 6-9 cats that were thrown out of a home. Their owner was a hoarder that was evicted, and the landlord put the cats that he left outside.
Please let them know if you can help trap any cats.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the posting to see if they still needed help. Today I randomly turned down a side street looking for parking for an appointment. And I saw a trap in a yard covered in a white sheet.
A woman was sitting in her car keeping an eye on the trap. We introduced ourselves and talked about TNR, and it turns out this was the place that the Everyblock posting was about. What a strange coincidence. Well, in animal rescue, especially, things always seem to happen when you think about them a lot. I wish it would work that way for the lottery.
The woman told me that so far two cats have been trapped and there may even be cats left inside the empty house. Neither scenario is very good for these cats.
Diann says: I can help trap. Is this in Logan Square? – Diann
That’s wonderful! Yes, this is in Logan Square. If you can’t respond directly to the Everyblock link above in this post, please email the person coordinating this rescue effort at [email protected] Thank you!
Remember Knox? Well, actually her name is now Maddox. She was brought by someone to Anti-Cruelty Society, ACS. ACS brought her to Chicago Animal Care and Control, CACC, where her paperwork was filled out as “per ACS, feral not able to touch, will bite.” Because she was assessed as being feral, she was scheduled to be killed. When I visited CACC, their amazing volunteer group, the CACC Cat Transfer Team, showed me Maddox. The original plan was to TNRelocate her into a caretaker’s backyard.
Maddox is now officially being fostered by her rescuer caretaker. She was admitted into Tree House Humane Society’s “foster to the floor” program, where the foster pet parent cares for the cat and takes her to Tree House’s clinic for scheduled medical care until there is room in their shelter. It’s an amazing program that helps get these cats off the street and makes sure they are healthy while easing them back into indoor life.
Maddox gets along with other cats and seems to understand that she has been given a second chance. Please contact Tree House if you are interested in adopting her.
Maddox was frightened, not feral.
In December I transferred five cats classified as feral from Chicago Animal Care and Control, CACC. The plan was to spay and neuter/vaccinate/eartip/microchip them and return them back to their original locations where they came from. Otherwise, because they were classified as feral and considered unadoptable, they would have eventually been killed. Tree House Humane Society covered all of their TNR medical expenses, and one of their long-term volunteers and cat colony caretakers came with me to do the transfer. Four of the five cats were successfully returned back outside to their original locations after recovering from their medical procedures.
This caretaker was relocating the fifth cat into her yard, because this cat originally came from a very busy intersection. The caretaker lives close to this intersection, so we thought this relocation would work quite well.
It worked out even better than we thought. This cat, named Knox, has stayed in her yard for a month now, and was quite vocal the entire time. Knox trained her new caretaker to feed her multiple times a day, and showed other friendly tendencies. Perhaps Knox was never feral at all, just cautious in CACC’s facility. Once she felt safer, she started to show signs that she was friendly. Here is Knox inside for now.
Knox in her box.
Part of being a registered cat colony caretaker per the 2007 Cook County Managed Care of Feral Cats Ordinance 07-O-72 is submitting the information on all of the cats you have TNR’ed.
I just submitted my updated colony information to Tree House. I’ve been registered with them since 2007. This was a great way for me to get my paperwork organized.
So, here’s the cat math.
Since 2004, I have spayed/neutered 171 cats in 18 locations, most of which are within 6 blocks away from me. Most of these cats were TNR’ed.
50 of these cats were adopted out or admitted into no-kill shelters.
But the number I am most interested in is how many more cats were NOT born outside as a result of doing TNR. It’s a number I cannot prove, because I prevented it from happening. But it is why I do what I do.
The numbers don’t seem real until I am faced with a new colony. Then it’s easy to see how the numbers add up because a colony that is not being TNR’ed usually looks like this at feeding time.
From left to right: Francis, Clover, Blackie, Patches, Spokes, and Gracie
This is some of the cats from the Eleanor Rigby Colony that PAWS Chicago told me about in 2008 before I started TNR. Since then, I have TNR’ed or adopted out 18 feral and stray cats and kittens from there. 4 years later, the colony is now down to just 4 cats being fed regularly. This is proof that TNR works. How many more cats would be there today had nothing been done? Even if the cats were just all removed, more will keep coming to take their place, which is known as the vacuum effect.
So here’s to a new year! I’m going to keep thinking about these numbers and make 2013 the best year yet.
Today was a beautiful sunny winter day so I decided to go for a run. I ran by the Peacock Colony and saw Checkers lounging in someone’s yard. No matter what else is going on in there, I can always find the cats in other people’s yards. Checkers is actually part of the Eleanor Rigby Colony two blocks away.
Checkers
I TNR’ed Checkers four years ago, December 17th, 2008 at PAWS Chicago. You can see him checking out the traps along with the other community cats here.
Hami says: My next neighbors are really mean to animals. They give me a hard time in taking care of stray cats. The stray cats like to go to their yards and they would scream at me for not locking the cats up.
I am sorry to hear this. Are the cats TNR’d? You may want to look up local resources for help. Alley Cat Allies is a good place to start: http://www.alleycat.org/page.aspx?pid=444
Honey Bouncy Bear found a new use for our chiminea. She’s a part of our James’ Gang Colony and has been coming to our yard regularly since being TNR’ed in May of 2011 at PAWS Chicago.
You weren’t going to use this for anything else, were you?
WOW. Interesting. PLEASE keep us posted and call me if you need anything
Thank you, Erica! This has been quite the learning experience.