VOLUME 1, ISSUE 4

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When you hear the term "feral", what visions are invoked? You probably imagine a wild-eyed, hair-raised, tom cat with teeth and claws bared. The definition of feral is that which is not tame nor domesticated, wild, or savage.  I guess you could say that describes a large number of the cats that we rescue and virtually all of the kittens.

Roughly half or more of the cats and kittens we rescue are essentially homeless, wandering around until someone comes along and with the heart to rescue them.  Occasionally we get cats that come from homes where they're no longer wanted.  Those are usually the easiest to place because they tend to be quite sociable.  Even the kittens that we rescue are relatively easy to tame, depending on their ages when rescued.

Early on, before my husband John and I were experienced with fostering cats, we agreed to foster two feral kittens.  We'd just finished fostering and placing our first litter of adorable kittens and figured we were about to start the process all over again.  We couldn't have been more wrong.

The kittens had to be trapped and we ended up getting them one at a time.  The first kitten was a cute gray and white, long-haired, fluffy "fireball" with a pink nose. He was quite feisty.  We couldn't get near him, for fear of bodily harm. These kittens were older than the last litter we'd had, roughly three months old.

I named the gray one "BooBoo" because he played peek-a-boo with me and also because I knew his sidekick "Yogi" was coming. About a week later, the second kitten was trapped. He was identical to the first, but with buff and white coloring. They immediately paired up and we now had two cats terrorizing us! We didn't know what we had gotten ourselves into!

We tried for several weeks to pet them. I was able to pet them briefly if I had tuna to offer, but we were getting nowhere fast. They were growing up and we were concerned that they'd remain fearful forever.

Another volunteer who'd had more experience dealing with feral cats suggested that we use food to work with the cats. She said to not leave food in their room and to only bring food when I was in the room with them. Then, as they hungrily ate, the plan was to pet them and thus associate the petting with a pleasurable experience: eating food. So I'd decided to give that a try.

After removing the food, the cats were so hungry because they refused to come to me to eat. But I persisted. I put food on a long spoon that I extended to them. I used tempting wet food and tuna and finally they gave in to their appetites. I pet them as they ate and sometimes they pulled away, but usually they tolerated it. This continued for a

few days, maybe two weeks. And then something truly amazing happened! I brought their food in as usual and sat with them while they ate. But this time, when I reached out to pet BooBoo, he responded by arching his back and pressing against my hand! I thought I was imagining things, but it continued to happen. I was ecstatic with joy! This was a huge leap for BooBoo and he just kept on improving every few days. Before long, he didn't require food to respond to petting. And Yogi wasn't far behind. He quickly caught on to BooBoo's actions.

(Continued on page 5)