The release part of tnr, and the socialization part

The PDX pride Mommy here:

We sent Miss Marble on her way outside again. :'( I always choke up when we release a feral back into the wild. It's such a bittersweet moment! It's where she belongs, though. She just was freaking out too much inside. She bounded off like a rabbit, straight to a hiding place she and the rest of the family use, under the cedar tree (surrounded by rosebushes). Then, when she saw us wave at her and realized we could still see her, she bounded off to another favorite place, through the back fence into the wilderness of the wetland behind us.

Hemming did very well with his testing today!  We are sooo proud of him!  There were a lot of dogs waiting in line, and one other cat who looked like him, only female and a little older.  This was his first experience being around dogs, and he aced it.  He meowed the whole time we were waiting, while the dogs barked.  I really wish more dog owners would put their dogs through obedience courses, or at least train them properly.  Two barked and lunged at a lady wearing a straw hat, another dog kept nipping at its neighbor in line, and a lady made her dog walk right down the line to the end rather than walking around a different way to get to the end.  Maybe the owners need obedience training, too?

When we got checked in, and were in line again waiting for the vet, a big dog who was behind us in line came over to the carrier and sniffed Hemming through the bars.  Hemming sniffed him back, and put one of his paws up to the mesh door like he was asking the dog to play with him!

The vet and vet tech who did the blood draw couldn't barely believe that Hemming was born feral and that we'd only had him a short time.  They both said he looked and acted like a tame kitten, and were quite impressed with him!  He was so calm for his blood draw, even came out of the carrier nicely after the vet tech scruffed him.  He flinched and tried to look at his leg when they poked him, but he didn't mew in surprise!  Afterward, he walked right back into his carrier on his own, after the vet tech redirected him from wanting to jump down off the table.  We get his test results back on Tuesday, but are fairly certain that he doesn't have any bad diseases.

He's now in our office at home with the door closed, but free to roam in here.  He absolutely loves having a room of his own!  He walked around for a bit after I showed him his dishes and put him in the box to show him what that was, then I put him on my lap and petted him for a bit.  The first lap he's been on!  He wanted to climb, so he climbed up the door to the carrier, onto the top of it.  Then, after getting down from there, he climbed up the back of the computer desk onto the CPU tower and is very happy in his newfound nest.  Snuggly, purry, smiling, the picture of contentment!

Both kittens came through surgery fine

The PDX pride Mommy here:

Both kittens are recovering.  The marbled kitten turned out to be a little female, so her new name is Miss Marble.  She scratched, bit, and took off running through the house when I was transferring her to a carrier from the trap.  Not a good idea for her!  I'm alright, she's recovered from her scare, and she's in the carrier with food and water.  The polydactyl tabby/white kitten is a male, but had only one testicle.  They thought the other one might not have dropped yet, so they did an exploratory surgery, and it simply wasn't there!  His new name is Hemming.  He let me pet his paw pads, stretched his foot through the mesh on the trap, and put his head in my hand with his tongue sticking out, wiggling the tip of his tongue in nursing fashion as I was petting his nose!  He's taking a bit longer to wake up completely, and still hasn't woken up completely even though it's been about 6 hours.  I'm kind of worried about that, although he's looking at me when I talk to him.  He'll sit against the side of the carrier, then slowly start to tip over the other way, then correct himself.  He likes sitting better than lying down right now, for some reason.  Both kittens have eaten and had some water.

Tomorrow morning they go in to the mobile clinic at Petco for their FeLV/FIV testing.  They got their rabies shots today and first boosters.

At this point, we are pretty sure that Miss Marble is going back outside after the weekend's over, given her run around the house this afternoon.  Hemming seems like he wants human contact, so he's a good candidate for socialization, depending on how his personality is when he wakes up fully.

 Sleepy little boy Hemming in the carrier

Miss Marble says, "Leave me alone, woman with the flashy box!"

Two trapped!

The PDX pride's Mommy here:

Two of the kittens are trapped and inside!  We made the decision not to try for more, because we can pay for the neuter fees and then next week get these two tested for diseases.  If we trapped any more at this time, we wouldn't be able to get them tested, and we'd much rather know if they are clean before trying to socialize them.

At around 4 pm, the polydactyl tabby/white boy made his way into the trap after the canned food, got trapped, and started screaming his little head off.  He couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to go back out the way he came in.  He kept going to the door of the trap and batting at it, trying his best to make it open.  I brought him inside, where my husband and I gently talked to him and the inside cats all came to talk to him and investigate him.  Heimdall is turning out to be the best babysitter in the world, another reason why he reminds me so much of Skylar!  He lay down right next to the baby and started purring, which relaxed the baby considerably.

About an hour later, the marbled boy was trapped.  He made quite a ruckus in the trap, pulling the newspaper lining over his food, sticking his paws out the top, and turning around and around in the trap.  When I brought him inside and placed his trap alongside his brother's trap, they both calmed right down and started trying to play paws through the mesh with each other!  The inside cats went over to see the marbled boy, too, and were very interested in the rearranging he'd done with his trap paper.  He finally uncovered his food and ate, though it took him about two hours to do so because he was so stressed.

Little Bit cannot be around these new ones for a while, because she wanted to clean their behinds for them.  She was a mama cat, after all, with four boys of her own, so she knows how to treat young ones.  She just doesn't realize that you can't clean and groom someone through trap mesh.  Besides, a stranger cat trying to clean them was just scaring the little ones instead of helping.

They're sleeping now, curled up in their traps, with water bowls that they haven't touched yet.  We'll feed them some canned food in the morning, then take them to the feral cat clinic for their surgeries and eartipping.  We'll pick them up in the afternoon sometime and take them back home.  They will stay inside with us for the weekend to heal, and we will try to get them tested for diseases early next week.  They'll be inside until we figure out if they are disease-free, and then we will start to socialize them.  Once they are socialized, we will either make them our outside pets or adopt them out to a good home, depending on the level of socialization.

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

 Heimdall and Tabby greet the poly tabby/white boy.

 Heimdall being a good babysitter and purring to calm the baby down.

 Mr. Talkative!

 Carbon's not afraid of kittens anymore!  Checking each other out.

 Two brothers in traps:  marbled kitten on the left and poly tabby/white kitten on the right.

Tabby greeting the marbled kitten.

Heimdall greeting the marbled kitten.

It's Trapping Day!

It's trapping day at the PDX pride!  Mama Leopard's disappeared, along with the normal-toed tabby/white kitten.  We hadn't seen the striped kitten for a few days, either, but he came back last night!  The polydactyl tabby/white and the marbled kittens have been eating out of the open traps, as has "Daddy" Tuxie, so we're confident that we can trap at least the three little boys and maybe Tuxie as well.  We'll bring them in tonight and take them to the clinic for fixing/eartipping tomorrow.  Here's some pictures from the past couple days, where everyone was learning how to eat out of the traps.

 Tux keeping watch as the striped kitten eats in the left trap and the other two eat together in the right trap.

 Wait!  How come brother is eating in the box and I can't figure out how to get inside?

 Is this how we're supposed to do this?

 Freya:  Yep, I see them both eating in the same trap!

Hi!  Do you have any more of that yummy canned food?

Wordy Wednesday: Catching up on the news, pt. 2

Mama Leopard writes:

My boys and I have been hanging out at the house for the past week, right up close most of the time.  When we need shelter, we've been hiding in the roses around the cedar tree, just off to the right of the picture above.  It makes a great hideout, and we're camouflaged from the raccoons (even though they haven't done anything bad to us).  The lady and man say that next week there will be wire boxes over our food.  I'm not sure about that, but as long as we can still get to the food I don't have a problem with it.  At least, not until I see the boxes.

The lady (and sometimes the man) comes out at about 9 pm to put water in the bowl and put food out for us.  We show up, and if the humans are running late my kittens tap on the glass while I wait expectantly about a foot from the window.  When the humans come out, I back up but am still pretty close.  I'm learning to trust them, so I let them be within 3 feet of me now!  My babies run, but pop right back up and investigate.  My striped boy was mewing to the man, and the man meowed back to him!  My little one didn't know the humans could speak our language, so he looked from the man to me, and back again to him, then mewed again and got an answer again!

Mrs. Raccoon writes:

I had three kits around the time that Mama Leopard had her kits.  Now that they are old enough to travel well and eat regular food, I have shown them where the cat food is.  Since my kits are so young, I usually accompany them.  The picture above shows me in the middle and two of my kits.  However, two nights ago I let them go on their own to the food place.  I should have known better!  They are too young to handle the ones on the other side of the window!  The one on the other side of the window who looks like us, Little Bit, likes to jump at me when I eat.  Since I wasn't there, she jumped at my kits, and they jumped back, thinking she was going to come out and play with them!  They don't know what cats are, and thought she was another baby raccoon.  All three jumped at her at the same time, hitting the window with a bang.  That scared Little Bit, and she meowed at them.  They got confused, stood up, and put their front paws on the window, looking in at her.  She jumped again and they jumped again.  The human came and removed Little Bit.  Then the human came back to the window, knelt down, and looked my three babies straight in the eyes.  In a commanding voice, she told them that they could not jump at the window like that, Little Bit was not going to come out to play, and they had better be nice.  They looked at her, got down on all fours again, and backed up.  Still looking over their shoulders, they ran back to where I was and told me all about it!

Wordy Wednesday: Catching up on the news, pt.1

Sorry for not posting bloggie entries for a while!  We have been taking care of Daddy, because he has a crushed disk in his back.  Not nice, and it's very hurty for him.  We've been giving him a lot of extra snuggles and purrs, and Mommy has been taking care of him, too.

 Missy writes:

I've found a new snuggle spot!  It's very comfy and surrounds me, plus I can play whenever I want to.  Do you like it?  I've got another favorite one, too.  We just got our prize from Goma on Friday, and we blogged about it on the Frugal Feline.  Go see my stretchy tummy!  *gigglepurrs*

Heimdall writes:

I've found a better comfy place than Missy has!  Mommy left the bathroom cupboard open while she dried off from her shower, and I hopped in to snuggle!  Too bad they won't let me be in here most of the time.

 Freya writes:

Forget snuggle spots!  I like to play!  While Mommy was taking pictures of everyone for our post about the new snuggler/scratcher, I was attacking the string hanging from the camera!

See my teeth?

I also love putting my strings in the bathtub and playing with them in there!

Happy Birthday to Rori!

Rori writes:

Today's my 4th birthday!  Wow, such a lot has happened in four years.  I was born far away from here, across the river in Portland, Oregon.  My momcat was a feral tabby and my dadcat was a huge tabby named SpongeBob.  Sponge lived across the street from the green house and brought all the ferals to the back porch food bowl.  My brother and I were the only two in our litter, and I had an older brother who looked like me as well.  My littermate brother, now named Knut, is a Siamese/tabby mix (his dadcat was a Siamese).  He got adopted to a friend when we were very little, so I barely remember him at all.  My inside family raised me, and my auntie Lydia was my mentor.  She's the one who chose me to succeed her as the Big Kitty of the House.

Today I think I'll snuggle with Mommy while she sleeps, then go check on Daddy while he naps later on.  It's my job to check up on everyone and make sure things are running smoothly in the household.  I check on the outside part of the family, too, watching through the big window to see if they're outside and making sure our purrents know if they show up.  I keep my distance from the window, preferring to watch from my chair rather than right up at the window like the others do.

Mommy always gives me a birthday rub-down, rubbing me from my shoulders all the way to my tail.  I love when she does that, and I purr so loudly to tell her how happy I am.  She'll also clean my eyes for me, as I have goopy eyes from allergies right now.  I'm glad she cleans my eyes so that I can see better.  I tell her exactly when I need that done, and she obeys.  Yes, I definitely am the Lady of the House, Big Kitty of the House!

Here's a picture of my brother Knut and me when we were about 4 weeks old.