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Thursday, January 20, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
friendly feral? - 10:13 AM
(filed under 'animal')
if our cats downstairs are feral, they're very friendly feral. i've been down there to do washing etc & the mummy cat has come along & rubbed around my legs. she actually came up the stairs meowing at the back screen door the other day, too.
she let me pat her & even let her kitten come up to say hello as well.
do feral cats let you do that? i didn't encourage her or anything, she just came up to me of her own volition.
on closer inspection, she seems to be in good health, aside from being skinny. her eyes & ears look clear, her coat is in good nick. she doesn't have a collar, obviously, but i wonder if she used to belong to someone?
if she's a domestic cat i don't want her & her kitten to be taken away & killed, but i don't want her to be killing birds either, as i know she was while we were away, because shroom cleaned up the laundry of many, many feathers.
even if we fed her & her kitten well, cats still like to hunt, don't they?
hmm. what to do?
we have many around the office. one is adopted by staff. some are keen with humans while others are shy. depends on there past relationships with us i guess. i'd guess you'd leave it alone. if you feed it you might have a dependent for life.
Cats loooove to hunt. It's just in their nature. Lemmy has always worn a bell, and so far *fingers crossed* that has guarded against him catching any birds. He will gladly attack flies, spiders and lizards, though. I've lost count of the amount of lizards I've rescued from his paws this summer. Hell, even if we give him a prawn or chicken wing he'll pace around at it and pat it. Get bells on them if you can and keep them fed. They sound quite feral, though, which may make things more difficult.
Questions: why don't you want her to hunt? Does she hunt for food (fed cats don't, of course, they just leave a mess at the doorstep)?
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If you feed her she's less likely to hunt. You could also befriend her enough to put a collar and bell on her. I guess she wouldn't be fully feral - she could be wild though - eg might have been the progeny of a domestic cat, but has never really been around people, or got dumped or something. They still instinctively come up to people. Or she might have belonged to someone before as you say.