We are proud to have an ally and partner with Alderman Joe Moreno and the 1st Ward! We look forward to working together in raising awareness to help Chicago’s outdoor cat population.

Have you noticed cats running around in your backyard or alley? They’re all over the city lurking in the darkness, and reproducing at startling rates. There are resources available to concerned residents who want to curb their populations, and the Cats In My Yard group has taken impressive strides toward getting these cats caught, neutered, and returned. Trapping, Neutering, and Returning (TNR), has been proven to be a successful method of cutting the feral cat population by more than half. Here are some numbers from 2014, most of the data is in the 1st Ward.

The organization has done a lot of excellent work, but it certainly comes at a cost. If you’d like to donate to keep them going, you can donate through Paypal at [email protected] or click the link here. Our office is very excited to be partnering with this organization to get them the tools they need to reduce the feral cat population. We will also be educating our neighbors on how they can create cat traps of their own. For more information, or if you’d like to volunteer you can email Vanessa at [email protected]!

See the 1st Ward Newsletter

Check out the spread.

Trisha from Dogma Petcare contacted me the other week offering this donation of cat food and litter.

Her business is close by me, and I was happy to visit. I got quite the greeting.

Dogma was doing a towel and blanket drive for Chicago Animal Care and Control, and these extra cat supplies ended up part of the mix. Trisha said her employee, Rebecca, thought of Cats In My Yard. When I asked how Rebecca heard of me, she said she was at Forget Me Knodt and saw the Feral Flowers being sold last year. I am so happy to hear yet again that the Feral Flowers Project helped spread the word about TNR and feral cats.

Thank you again, Trisha and Dogma, for your generosity and compassion for the outdoor cats! You can come visit the cats in my yard anytime.

Alicia is caring for a lot of outdoor cats in Englewood. Her home is now their home. The majority of the cats are friendly. This is not a colony, this is a place where people who cannot care for their cats, bring the cats and leave them there, or the cats are lucky enough to find her on their own.

She feeds and cares for them daily. She provides outdoor shelter for them, and also has a few fosters indoors.

I met Alicia a few weeks ago while volunteering with PAWS Chicago PAWS for Life Outreach Program. They have been helping her do TNR and have been able to admit some of her cats into their adoption program. Here are a few of the cats being returned to her that day, riding along in the PAWS van with us. When we returned the cats outside, you could see how friendly some of them were immediately.

I knew who Alicia was before I met her because one of the cats from my own Humboldt Park neighborhood ended up on her Englewood block last year. Long story short, this cat was originally adopted out from Tree House, but I trapped him in my yard a few years ago because the owner always let him out. The microchip was then referenced to me. Somehow this cat ended up on Alicia’s block years later. She brought him into PAWS for treatment last December, and they traced his chip. Unfortunately the cat was euthanized because he was so sick. To this day we have no idea how this cat ended up from my neighborhood to hers.

Alicia wants the friendly cats on her block to have indoor homes. The majority are just too friendly to stay safe on the street. Every time we visit, several of the cats come up to us for pets. I contacted my friends at Hyde Park Cats to see if they could help. This rescue group is amazing. They responded immediately, and visited Alicia last week. That same day, they took two cats into their foster-to-adoption program. In fact, the grey tabby cat in that last photo is one of the cats that is now in one of their foster’s homes. His name is Sweet. Check him out now indoors.

They also admitted this little black cat into their program. She loved being outdoors with her friends.

But she really loves being indoors.

Please contact Hyde Park Cats if you are interested in adopting one of these cats, or donating to their cause. Alicia also needs additional fosters for her other friendly cats. Here are a few more. 

Zombie Cat from the V Colony got her name from her feeders because according to them, she was always sick.

She definitely had chronic upper respiratory infections, but two years ago there were also other things wrong with her. She had sores behind her ears, and her fur looked like it was coming out, almost like molting.

It took months, but I was finally able to re-trap her, and ended up trapping a few new cats and another sick cat from this colony at the same time. During this process, Jim came out to help me. My TNR friend, Dave H, also came out to hep me. I tried a drop trap even for the first time. It was indeed quite a process, because the feeders would not stop feeding. But I finally re-trapped her the good old-fashioned way – at 3am with sardines in oil for bait in a Tru-catch trap because she was finally hungry enough to go in.

Zombie got a dental, and was treated for URI with three rounds of antibiotics. She was inside with me receiving multiple medications for almost two months. The entire time she acted feral. I was able to confine her in this ingenious feral cat recovery lounge that Dave made for this purpose. Zombie did well in there.

But I could tell confinement was stressful. She did not look like herself after awhile. I did not want to break her spirit. The vet said he did all he could for her so I let her go even though she was still congested, but still much better. She seemed to thrive outside again, always with the same grumpy look on her face. She was reunited with her friends – this colony is made up of 15 cats currently, all TNR’d and all most likely born in that yard. I was happy to see her grumpy face – it meant she was feral and didn’t want human contact, just maybe some food.

In fact, no matter how sick she was, Zombie loved food. She was always first in line for it, and the other cats complied. She was indeed an alpha female.

At the beginning of February I visited the V Colony with some journalists doing a story on feral cats and TNR. Zombie was sitting on the steps and let me touch her for the first time. I knew then something was very wrong with her then. You can see her in the video.

That was the last time I saw Zombie. By the time I got back with a carrier to get her to the vet, she was gone. I asked the feeders if they could let me look in their yard and trap. They refused. I did go back several times looking for her, but never saw her again.

Last week the feeder brought Zombie’s body to Tree House to be disposed of properly. They found her in their yard just like I thought they would. Her body was too decomposed to do a necropsy. I only know this because Tree House told me since they were also in contact with the feeder.

Zombie’s life and story taught me a lot. She showed me her resilience and will to survive, and I hope the vet care made her last year a little bit better. I will always think of her when I use the recovery lounge for another feral. I will always think of her when faced with adversity and resistance when trying to help a colony. I will always think of her because I still feel guilty I couldn’t help her ultimately. That I was prevented to help her hurts more, but it’s the reality sometimes of doing TNR. We do the best we can to help these animals. Perhaps Zombie died on her own terms regardless, and that was best for her. Maybe the vet care just prolonged the inevitable. I don’t know.

Rest in peace, Zombie, you no longer have to suffer being sick here anymore.

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.

These past few weeks there has been a few deaths from the colonies. Dice was euthanized. Betty was found dead in her backyard.

This can be difficult, but at least we know what happened to these cats.

One of the hardest things for a feral cat colony caregiver to deal with is the “unknown.” It really sucks when a cat “disappears.”

Of course, that is part of being a caregiver. Cats disappear sometimes, and all you can do is hope that perhaps the cat was scooped up and adopted indoors by another person (yeah, that sounds like a fantasy, but sometimes, the TNR’d, ear tipped cats show up later with a collar on), or, more likely, if they died, there was little unnecessary suffering involved.

It’s one of the reasons that I will never understand how people can let their pet cats in and out, especially in a heavy urban environment such as Chicago, where pretty much anything can happen. Once a cat leaves their property, they are fair game, legally and realistically. Cats can get poisoned, hit by cars, claimed without recourse by another person, tortured, or just wander off forever. Cats who are socialized to humans are especially susceptible to such danger. Feral cats are more savvy, as the adult ones outside are truly the fittest and strongest from their litters. They know the streets and know to be wary of danger. After all, they’ve made it this far. The outdoors are their true home and they know how to navigate it and survive.

Noche Nariz was a black and white cat with a distinctive black nose from the Jose and the Pussycats Colony, the same colony where Betty was from.

This colony is mostly made up of TNR’d black cats, so cats like him and Betty were very visible from the start. 

Noche hung out on Maria’s steps ever since I TNR’d him in 2010, waiting for dinner.

I wouldn’t call him friendly, exactly, but he was acclimated to his territory at Maria’s house, and the three other houses next door where the rest of her family and neighbors live who also feed the cats. He did not flinch or move from his hangouts when you passed him on the sidewalk. Instead, he would pose beautifully.

During the winter, he was one of the few cats from the colony that actually used the outdoor cat shelters his feeders made for him in their backyard.

When I was talking to Maria and her family about Betty, I asked about Noche because I hadn’t seen him since the spring, after the polar vortex. Maria admitted to me she also hadn’t seen him, and had no idea what happened to him.

It kills me how many cats here seemed to make it past last year’s terrible winter, but then got sick, perished, or “disappeared,” by the time spring arrived.

There is a chance that perhaps Noche was scooped up and adopted by a neighbor that he may have bonded to. He had a tendency to hang out by people’s front doors, but so far I have no idea.