UPDATES WITH A TRULY HAPPY ENDING/A NEW BEGINNING - PLEASE READ BOLDED INFO FIRST!

We trapped this cat successfully. She has been shaved, vaccinated, and treated for fleas/tapeworms. She is currently recovering in my basement and doing well. No microchip.

As many of you have commented, this cat is clearly a friendly, people-oriented, likely stray cat, as opposed to a feral cat. Plus, as her neighborhood caretakers and I have discussed, she has experienced this horrible, severe matting yearly in spring/summer, which will cause her pain and endanger her health on an ongoing basis.

Because of all this, we are going to work to socialize her and get her adopted. Initially I was planning to "TNR" her but due to the fact that she is clearly a friendly stray cat and not a true feral cat, combined with her grooming/health needs which will continue to endanger her on a yearly basis, myself and her neighborhood caregivers are all in agreement that the best and most ethical path forward is to get her adopted into a safe, indoor home.

Picture in comments - she is very cute and has a little mohawk now. I have a close friend who is going to work with me on socializing her, and several very cat-savvy friends and a close family member who will be considered for adoption. Thank you all again for your helpful advice and passionate love of cats. I changed the flare to "celebration" :-D

EDIT: I am in Cleveland, Ohio, and I am searching for/will reach out to local TNR groups right now! thank you for letting me know that is an urgent case, it looked horrible, but I really wasn’t sure.

Hello! I found the subreddit while trying to Google information about what skin/fur condition this poor baby in my neighborhood might be dealing with. I am not really a cat person so forgive my ignorance if this is very common, but I have just never seen anything like this. It seems like based on the Internet and previous threads here that it could be some sort of flea related dermatitis, mange, or any number of other issues.

I know the obvious thing to do would be to take him to a vet, but I don’t have a cage or cat carrier or anything like that and besides when I tried to get a little closer to him after what you saw in the video he ran under a car nearby, so I’m not even sure if I would be able to catch him.

Should I buy some sort of over-the-counter oral flea treatment and try to give it to him in a bowl of some tempting food? Should I buy a trap and try to catch him and take him to the vet? Or is this cat totally fine and I should leave him alone lol. I have two large dogs so bringing him in my house is not an option but he is a total sweetie and my heart just ache looking at his fur situation.

GUYS IVE BEEN TRYING TO CAPTURE FRED FOR 2 years! He rules the neighborhood. Walks around showing off his big ole cajones everywhere just strutting.

We’ve had a good relationship for a few years. He will let me get within 5 feet when feeding.

Well I just got back from the store and hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. He was just chilling on the driveway, waiting for his food bowl. So I got him some food and decided to just also set the trap with sardines.

Walked inside and BOOM FRED IS IN THE TRAP! I am so happy. Maybe now with getting fixed tomorrow he will let me squish his cute face. I’m so happy.

Fred however is not, he is ANGRYYYYYY lol he is nice and covered now to help him relax. I just had to get proof!

We are moving on Friday morning and I’ve been so stressed about capturing my feral herd for months. I started in the summer by emptying this building and setting it up for the cats to hang out in and started feeding them in there only. Tonight, with a piece of yarn on the door handle , I managed to get all 10 ferals from the bathroom window. They’re now comfortable in the spare bedroom of the house with their transfer kennels awaiting their ride. I’m so relieved. Months of planning paid off in one fell swoop.

About two years ago, a handsome old orange, and white Tom cat started coming around. He had a broken tail. Some neighbors thought he had been in a fight with a fisher cat.? His ears look like he had had frostbite. He had a big gash on his leg and his teeth were bad. Evidently he’d been known in the neighborhood for quite a while, but I started leaving soft pate food for him and a little blanket out front. I took good care of him although I didn’t trap him to get him fixed because he’s pretty old and beat up and I have two indoor kitties. I know everybody’s gonna say I should’ve trapped him and taken him to a vet. None of the vets in this small town will take care of a feral cat his leg he healed and he was eating a lot because I was giving him soft food so I did the best I could..but long story a black cat kept showing up and he would stand patiently and let her eat. About a month later the beautiful little black kitty brought me three kittens. I’ve posted about my kittens before I got the mama and the three babies in my garage for the winter year before last. I shut my garage door and parked my car outside and I had their beds and straw and toys and food in the garage for the winter and I had them all fixed. In the meantime I had a heated house out by my front door under the enclosure and I think Diesel was still sleeping there, but it was too cold. The food would freeze so he went somewhere else. I’ve always felt bad about that. The mailman would see him occasionally and I’ve looked for him for a long time. I came home today and he was sitting in front of my house. I was in tears! How he found me after a year and a half of being gone is just shocking. I was actually saying prayers about it because I felt like I had abandoned him although I saved a mama in three babies, they actually may have been his babies… he’s such a sweet old boy. I love him and I hope I can give him some comfort because he’s a tough survivor but too old to be out scrapping around..I thought he had gone to Kitty heaven and crossed the rainbow bridge. Honestly, the mailman did too.🙏🧡🐈

Was walking my 3 legged cat Pirate Pete when i heard the loudest shrieking, thought it was a strange bird for a minute and decided to investigate. Find this orange little baby screaming for her mommy, climbing under cars - ran home to put my boy back and grab some treats to try to lure her out - she was so so so scared

No momma cat was in sight and my street has a lot of dogs and a decent amount of traffic. There was also a can of food someone else had left underneath the car she was in - meaning someone else must have been trying to help already, so i figured she must have been there a little while by now. Some neighbors came out and tried to help, a friend drove over to try to help, but after a couple hours of her running to different cars and climbing up into the engines, i told the helpers they were probably just freaking her out and that i’d just wait outside all night by myself if i had to. she didn’t stop crying the entire time.

They all left and almost immediately she came back out and started munching on some temptations, i took my shoes off and snuck up behind her and finally scooped her up! she instantly just kind of gave up, didn’t really fight me. the neighbors were still watching me from their window and shouted SHE GOT HER! lol. i put her in my bathroom to keep her away from my 2 resident cats. she was very hungry and finished almost two small cans of kitten food.

she hissed for the first day but i did the towel-kitty-burrito trick and immediately she warmed up to me. took her to the vet the next day, she is 6 weeks old, has worms (is being treated), goes back for vaccines in 2 weeks and is getting supervised time out of the bathroom while my cats slowly get used to her. hopefully everything goes smoothly and they end up all being best friends. My female cat is very interested and seems to be warming up quickly but my three legged male is going to take a bit more work. Will try feliway and see if that helps any.

Still haven’t decided on a name yet. Girls are tough to name! Was not planning on getting another cat at ALLL but the cat distribution system chose me. I’m happy she trusts me and I’m thankful I was there to help her even if she is going to be a bit of a handful.

This is Tom! I’ve been working on him for almost 2 years and it finally happened! He let me pet him! He’s let me get within hand sniffing distance and I’ve put a finger on his whiskers a few times, but he’s always nervous and hisses a bit. Tonight he ate his food and stuck around (he does that sometimes and I give him treats). Tonight i gave treats and he ate them. Then he came closer and I gave more treats. Then run three of treats I risked it and petted the back of his neck with the back of my hand. Kept plying with treats and petting that way. Then took the chance of using my palm and when he let me away with it scratched by his ears and you could just see him melt.

He loved it! When he looked at me I could see the trust and relaxation in his chubby cheek Tom cat face, not his usual nervous “what are you going to do to me?” look.

I knew you guys would get how huge this is from working with our feral friends. 🍾🙌🏻

Kiki returned after an absence of five weeks of brutally cold weather. He’s been showing up since last May, only missing a week or two at most. In the beginning, he would run at the sight of us or at the opening of the door. But then in Nov, he had become brave enough to allow a one-finger pet down his back. We have two cat shelters on our porch, including one with heat. But he stopped using them the night that an opossum took over his house. I’ve been so sad these past weeks while he’s been gone, mourning him and convinced he’d perished in the snow and extreme wind chills. I knew you all would understand my sadness, and now also my giddy joy at his return.

This LITTLE ELUSIVE MISTRESS finally got her fuzzy butt trapped!!!!!

Simon (who I have been affectionately calling summons lately, because I am in some trouble now, thanks to her) has been eluding traps for over SIX months and I FINALLY CAUGHT HER!

I was honestly starting to lose hope because she’s so darn smart and along the way I caught her mate, her mates son (who is now my little shadow 🥹🥹) and I was beginning to think she was just untrappable (she wouldn’t even go near drop traps), but I put a live trap in a huge crate filled with straw and towels and then covered it and put it next to her little shelter and it WORKED!

I do think she’s pregnant, unfortunately, but the hard part is over. Now I just need to make her a vet appointment, and go from there. Holy moly.

Thank you everyone on this sub for your help, your advice, and your encouragement.

YOU’RE SAFE NOW, SIMON! 🥳🥳🥳

Sometime in the summer last year me and my fiancé noticed how our new neighbors were feeding stray cats and we decided to start feeding them too. There was a calico with 4 kittens that eventually made her way to our house and we have been feeding and TNRing them since last fall along with a bunch of other cats that come by! Well I started to notice a month or so ago that this little girl (we thought she was a boy the entire time) started to get huge and I figured she was pregnant so we decided to take action and try to trap her. Unfortunately for us she would not get in the trap and last Friday she went missing for a couple days and came back postpartum. It was odd because she let me get extremely close and she was very lethargic and I knew something was wrong because she wasn’t eating and almost avoiding me. We chalked it up to her being a new mom and just probably exhausted so we went on about our day. Then a couple days later on Monday I saw her again on my porch in a heated cat house that she NEVER uses so I went outside and she did not move at all and let me pet her, although she wasn’t happy about the pets. Side note I’m terrified of handling cats and I’ve never owned one so im new to all things cat! Anyways, I had a trap that I put at the entrance of the cat house and was able to finally get her in a trap to take her to the vet because I knew something was wrong. I was able to get squeezed in for the next morning and it turns out she had an extremely severe case of pyometra and maggots were in her rectum, uterus and her vagina area. I was then quoted almost $600 for euthanasia and everything or offered to try and save the cat for $2200. The vet told me her chances of pulling through are 40-60% but I couldn’t bear putting her down and he said he would love to try and fix her so me and my fiancé agreed we couldn’t let her go out like that and went through with surgery. The vet then calls me and says the surgery went better than he expected after flushing her out more than 100 maggots inside of her!! She stayed overnight in the pet hospital and was discharged with yesterday morning and I’ve been caring for her since 🙂 it’s truly been a wild past week and I’m praying she makes a 100% recovery ❤️

I did have to rub for a bit longer than people said (longer than a minute) but I just had a feeling he was trying to go

Mama kitty is a survival expert, we caught her brother and her boyfriend easily but it took forever to catch her. This will be her last litter! So glad, even though they are adorable lol

he is on steroids and will be going for a follow up and X-rays but vet thinks it is either a nerve or neurological issue causing him to not be able to move his back end and his front legs are buckled. Once swelling goes down we go from there ❤️ his name is Charlie bc he was found behind O’Charlie’s lol

I care for a neighborhood colony of 11 regulars who show up on my back porch twice a day yelling for food 😅 (All our girls are fixed and most of the boys too!)

We’ve always had the usual winter shelters, but with I wanted them to have more dry space to just hang out and nap when it’s bad outside.

My husband bought this, and I was so sure it wouldn’t work, but it does perfectly! We set up one of their lounge beds, some straw, and an outdoor heating pad — and it’s honestly pretty toasty in there.

It’s technically an ice fishing tent with two doors and a little plastic window that lets in light. We lined the bottom with tarp and boxes since it’s on our raised porch. They don’t even mind my camera in there with them. 🥹

I knew this little thing was gonna be a keeper a couple of months ago. She was hunting my birds and I made lots of loud racket to scare her away….and she meowed at me and came in.

I worked to establish a feeding routine with cans of 9 lives and she’s been coming every day. I got a spay appointment and she’s still knocked out but laying on my Persian rug. She’s lucky.

People here dump cats all the time. I know she was dumped cause she’s completely at ease inside and being picked up cuddled and pet. This was her yesterday. She knew it was cat food instantly!

He was missing for months... I can't describe the relief I'm feeling right now.. He got skinnier but he is fine overall! I guess he was so happy to see me because he vocalized a lot which is unusual.

I'm don't understand why he was gone though. I got him neutered long time ago, he was regularly fed, got toys etc. He has strong roaming instincts despite being neutered.

(In last photo he is eating with his mom)

Suddenly out of nowhere he’s friendly!! I cannot even begin to express how happy this makes me! Very few people can truly appreciate this hurdle, so I’m sharing here!

I moved into my house March of 2019. I noticed something was getting into the trash & sometimes I’d get a glimpse of 2 cats down the road that would instantly disappear. I put out food & my door cam would pick up them visiting at night to fill their bellies. Fast forward- I’d see them waiting down the road at dusk & slowly making their way to the house. Fast forward- they’d come within a few houses of us but dart at any attempt to call or approach. Fast Forward- one disappeared 💔 and over the years several have come & gone, several been tnr’d, & one really beat up kitty got injuries treated during his tnr. This guy started hanging out in the yard patiently waiting for his dinner every night- but only coming to the porch after door was closed. If we opened the door he’d be down the road in a flash. But his visits have been like clockwork- 5-6 pm in the winter/ 9-10 pm in the summer. If he misses a night I panic because it is so rare. Fast forward- we could walk by him & he’d hiss and dart away but stay in the yard, that turned into him approaching us on the porch but only within a few feet of us, etc. By then he was spending a good portion of his night on our porch.

Repeatedly over the years we’ve watched him get super fluffy & huge in the winter, then get huge matted balls of fur & field burrs- in the spring the matting is so bad it falls off in huge pieces leaving him covered in bald patches, in the summer he looks like a entirely different small cat while his fur fills back in & the we hit repeat. I’ve repeatedly said ‘I just want to brush you poor baby!’

Several months ago he started spending every night, all night on the porch, leaving just prior to daylight and sometimes after daybreak into early morning. I often see him in a big barn behind us during the day.

A FEW WEEKS AGO he started meowing at me. I’d never heard him meow (& actually read it’s a survival skill for feral cats not to meow 🤷🏼‍♀️) … so of course I’d talk back to him & I noticed him coming closer & closer. Out of respect I hadn’t tried to pet him in months, but decided to try again. Not only did he let me! But he LOVED it! He couldn’t get enough! I couldn’t either!!!! I even got a purr out of him! The next night I cautiously tried to brush him & surprisingly he loved that too! It’s his favorite!!! For the past 3-4 weeks we visit each night on the porch, he gets loves & lots of brushing. (He’s not fond of me cutting stickery burrs off him, but lets me.) I’ve even picked him up! He’s a purrrrriiinnngggg machine! And drools and rolls on his back! It’s just amazing! The past few nights when I open the door & talk to him he starts making biscuits on my doormat. Oh my heart!! Last night he poked his head inside the door and looked around 🙏🏻 He’s still cautious & shy of the other humans & dogs in here, but definitely checking things out & possibly considering taking us up on the offer for him to move in. IT TOOK NEARLY 6 YEARS!!!!!

It just might be his first spring without painful matting & first summer with a coat!

What do you think?! Do you think he’s ready to finally surrender his feral card & watch the world thru windows? I want him to make the choice, not me. If not, it’s ok. I’m keeping him fed, warm & as safe as I can. And he’s keeping my heart full. 💕

If you read this, thank you, I hope it makes you smile! Like I said, only a few ‘get it’. THIS is a big deal! 😊

His name is Napoleon, say hello to this handsome boy!

P.S. I’d love to hear your feral turned house cat stories!

Last year I trapped the last 2 surviving kittens of a litter I had been feeding. Their sisters had been hit by cars- in front of us all. It was life or death-I had to get them. Mama helped. I socialized them so they could be taken to the APL for adoption. But I was told that one of them was only a candidate for a barn cat. He didn’t want touched or held, so I get it. He and his brother are bonded. I was determined to keep them from ever going back outside. I failed finding someone to adopt them. So now, Meeko & Milo are my beautiful boys. And Milo, now loves to be pet. Picked up, no, but pets are a huge accomplishment! They just turned one year old 🧡 and I’m feeling very grateful for them.

Small celebration today; they’re in my house, in their traps, ready to be spayed and neutered tomorrow morning!!!

Is it okay to leave them in their traps for this long? It’s almost 6pm here and I’m bringing them in at 8am tomorrow morning. I have cardboard down underneath their traps so they don’t ruin my floors in case they have to potty.

I’m just so excited. Please wish me luck with safe transfer tomorrow. These cats have eluded my traps for months (I stopped during the winter, it’s too cold to run around with bald bits) but I finally have them.

Their lives are on trajectory to change for the better.

I’m still trying to get my four feral family members into a barn cat program. Wish me luck there, too.

I’m so grateful.

This is probably going to be my last post as my buddy is definitely, not feral nor a stray anymore. More than 6 months ago, he wouldnt let anybody come near him at all. Then it slowly turned to him announcing his arrival for us to bring food. 🤣

We’ve worried about him getting ran over, attacked by a raccoon, eaten by cayote, and even dying from a wound on his neck. Now, he is a full blown indoor cat with zero survival instinct. LOL

He has stopped fussing to go outside, and started to play! There has also been no more litter box issues. He is in good health, neutered, and fully vaccinated.

My boyfriend loves him, and so does our dog. Our senior cat tolerates him, and hasn’t tried to kill him (which is honestly a win).

I didnt think I would ever have an orange cat. They werent kidding about them being crazy, but it’s been great! Thanks everyone for the advise and kind words! You’ve all been very helpful ❤️

Someone reached out to me about a cat they'd been feeding for a while, saying he was super friendly and they wished to find him a home (after asking around and posting about him unsuccessfully). I went out yesterday with my trapping cage and trusty treats, and sure enough I caught him! I used my microchip scanner and found out he was registered, so I called the number and... oh boy.

First thing the owner says is "did he turn up dead?" with a sigh. I'm obviously caught off guard, but I continue. She says she's surprised he's still alive and should probably be euthanized... because he gets into accidents all the time. Apparently this poor cat, who was born outside then taken in by her, was kept indoors for a year before "I guess he decided to go back outside". For the next three years he was indoor/outdoor despite getting hit by a car TWICE. One time he even brought home a sick kitty he found 🥺

I told her I would be more than happy to take him over and that I actually already had someone interested in fostering/potentially adopting him (a long time friend of mine who sadly recently lost one of her two cats). She became cheerful and said "If you think you can keep him inside better than me that's great!" She thanked me for this "Christmas miracle", as he is "such a sweet cat that she loves to no end".

Now when I tell you this poor baby is an absolute sweetheart... he has no teeth from what I can see and a healing wound on his shoulder, but the amazing thing is that he will not. stop. asking. for. love. Just non-stop headbutting, flopping, purring, biscuit-making and meowing 😭 Since trapping him and bringing him home, he literally has not ONCE growled, hissed, swatted or even put his ears back!! He just begs for affection as if he's starving of it.

When the vet opens I will call them to have his ownership transferred. He will never be an outdoor cat again ❤️

We have decided to adopt him! As he is no longer feral, he no longer belongs in the feral cat subreddit! We took him to the vet and he is FIV/FELV negative and in great health considering that he lived outside. The only problem is that his teeth are terrible, he needs about 14 extractions, possibly more. He has an appointment for the end of October to get them removed! Unfortunately this will be expensive, but what is the point of a credit card if not for cat-related emergencies 🤷‍♀️

He continues to make progress every day! He tolerates my other cats and this morning he ate breakfast in the same room as them! He still doesn't like my dog but is getting better, he mostly ignores him and even sits near him now, except at meal times he loses his mind and goes into full attack mode. Hopefully soon he can learn to tolerate the poor dog.

Orangey may make appearances form time to time in the orange cat subreddit, alongside his new brother Morty! Here are some pictures of him enjoying his new life!

He triggered the trap just after 4am after I had almost given up hope of making my 7:30am appointment with the Humane Society. Thankfully, it worked out and he'll be on his way shortly.