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Ummm... the cat has been coming back without us feeding it.
Today it got into a appartment below us (two story house divided into two appartments), and got stuck in there. (There is a broken window that the landlord started to repair yesterday by taking out the pane of glass and not putting anything in it...). Ted had to climb through the widown to get the cat.
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If her human is letting her roam free when she's so pregnant, then obviously they don't care much about her or her kittens. Sorry I didn't see this thread earlier. Yes, I would provide a box for her. An ideal box is about 2x2 feet (60x60 cm) square and about 16" high. Keep the top closed but cut a notch out of one side for a door, making the opening low enough to allow mom easy access in and out but high enough to keep kittens from getting out when they start wiggling around. Perhaps 6" high (15 cm). Cover this opening with a swatch of dark opaque fabric.
It's very important that this box be put in a quiet dark place with 24 hour accessiblity for the mom, but safe from other predators. (I would keep her inside, of course.) Line the bottom with old sheets (which will need to be washed after the birth) or old newspapers (which will need to be replaced every week or so). The mom will shred these or fluff them up as she likes.
The kittens need almost total darkness for the first few days of life, for proper eye development.
The mom should be capable of handling the birth by herself. I've never had a birthing mom want company. Usually they disappear for a day, then you hear the little ones mewling. She will eat the placentas and clean up as well as she can. The bloody stains will still be a source of infection if you don't replace the bedding. Short periods of dim light are okay, in fact, because I did replace the sheets in Mouse's box the day the kittens were born, by very gently moving them over onto fresh sheets and lifting out the old ones, while Mouse was gone to eat and drink.
The tiny hours-old kittens spit at me for this intrusion. It sounded like a little cough or something. Very scary.
Anyway, congratulations on your new children! Jason used to take Alka Seltzer Plus cold medicine dissolved in Diet Coke when he would come over, and it helped. (Jason was a friend who was very allergic to cats.)
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posted
Oh, and milk is often not a good thing for cats to have. Lots of them are lactose intolerant, in fact, and it gives them terrible diarrhea.
For food, I would feed her Purina Kitten Chow. There is no need to wet it, but make sure plenty of fresh water is available to her at all times.
The kittens can also eat kitten chow, softened with water, from about their 3rd or 4th week. Feed them in a saucer so it's low enough for them to reach easily. They take a while to get the hang of eating from a dish, so be patient and keep trying. Rubbing your finger in the food, then smearing it on their little mouths is a help. If they lick it off and like it, they will want more.
For cats who were old enough to wean but not eating yet, I bought powdered KMR (kitten milk replacement) from the vet, and mixed it with water. They easily took to that and loved it right away. If they don't eat enough soon enough, they start getting rickets from lack of nutrition and that's just very sad and unnecessary. So make sure to provide food early, rather than late, and be patient about coaxing them to eat it.
I assumed that mine would eat on their own when they got old enough, or that their mom would teach them, but two of mine began to show some ill-effects from poor nutrition around the 4th or 5th week, and I was very mad at myself for not being more proactive about this. Particularly the runt of the litter, don't assume he or she is full if they are sleeping and not eating. You may need to supplement. Both of mine caught up later so no harm done, but it's something to be careful about.
[ July 01, 2004, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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quote:If her human is letting her roam free when she's so pregnant, then obviously they don't care much about her or her kittens.
This assumption and blanket accusation makes my hackles raise every time I see it.
"How dare that man allow his pregnant wife to go to the park? Obviously he doesn't care about her if he lets her go out in the big scary outdoors, where she could get mauled... by a lion! Or carried off by a condor! Why doesn't he tie her down to the bed, where she belongs?"
Cats are intelligent creatures. Adult cats are pretty good at knowing what is and is not good for them, and I seriously doubt that confining them to a small, boring, and lonely house is worth the reduced risks in most cases.
Anyhow, Jaiden, unless she's obviously in distress (like being trapped in that apartment, I'd just leave her alone. A box would be nice, but I doubt she'll choose to use it if you go to all the trouble of setting one up for her. Cats are fickle like that.
Post kitten pictures if you end up with them nearby!
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Aspectre, I'm almost positive that isn't the case. (Her nails were obviously clipped previuosly but have since grown out... not into a length that is really useful, but obviously they should have been clipped a while ago. She also prefers the indoors.)
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say someone found out she was pregnant and turned her out.
(She's welcome to come and go... she just -doesn't- go)
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posted
Of course we'll post kitty pictures if they show up
We're going to put up fliers with kitties face on it around here. Hopefully, the owner will come. But until then, we'll continue giving kitty place to stay. When enough time has passed, we'll have to give away cat though.
We're not the right place for a cat to live. I can feed the cat, but I can't have it in my appartment living area (health wise), and I for sure can't play with cat. Ted does somewhat, but he can't too long either, because he has allergies to kitty too.
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Zeugma, in fact, there are no predators (who aren't human) for pregnant women, and predating them is against the law.
Ask your vet what the difference is in life expectancy for indoor and outdoor cats. Ask them what the survival rate of a litter who is born outside vs. one born indoors. The numbers speak for themselves.
My hackles get raised by people who think cats are just fine outside and don't need shelter in the freezing cold or protection from wild packs of family dogs, cars, stray cats with incurable diseases getting in fights with them and biting and scratching them, fleas, intestinal parasites, coyotes (a big killer of cats around here), racoons, rabid or otherwise, drowning, falling, exposure, etc. etc.
[ July 02, 2004, 12:34 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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I think that cat has adopted you. Cats used to do that to me all the time. I've never had my own, just someone else's that loved me for some reason.
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ak, if all I cared about was squeezing the maximum number of years out of my pets, then I would agree. Indoor cats definitely have a higher life expectancy. But what kind of life is that? They are completely dependent on their owners for entertainment and company, when said owners are usually gone at least 9 hours a day. Leaving the cat to stare at the walls and sleep all day, whoopee.
My indoor/outdoor cat, on the other hand, had a whole world apart from us, full of hunting mice, climbing trees, running full-tilt through the half-acre of overgrown grass.... and yes, he did get a few bumps and scrapes in his 13 years, including eating a poisoned mouse and dislocating his knee on a poorly timed jump... but he healed up and went right back to being king of the backyard.
Maybe he could have made it to 15 or 18 years old, I don't know. He passed away in his sleep. But would I have traded his freedom and adventures for a couple of extra years of looking longingly out the window? No.
quote:I promised I'd never let anything happen to him!
Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.
What?
Well you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.
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It all depends on where you live. I grew up in the country in NE Kansas. We had 3.5 acres, and had several miles of scrub woods behind our house, and no major roads nearby. Our cats were all indoor outdoor cats, and all of them lived well into their late teens--generally 17 or 18--and died of things they'd have died of regardless of whether we'd let them outside or not. There were coyotes in the woods, but they never got the cats (actually, though, the dogs haven't fared as well. A rat terrier in the neighborhood was killed by coyotes, we think, and a mountain lion mauled one of the neighborhood dogs a few years ago.).
Recently, I've been living in a semi-rural setting, and was adopted by a cat (she wasn't pregnant, but otherwise it was a lot like Jaiden's experience--she just picked us, and refused to leave.) When it got cold we violated our lease and let her come inside. In the winter she was an 80% indoor cat, and in the summer she's probably a 70% outdoor cat. Or was. We just moved (as in last night) to an urban area, and live on a very busy street across from a hospital. Lots of heavy, fast moving traffic. If we let her out, I'm pretty sure she'd get hit--she just doesn't have much car sense, never having had the opportunity to develop it. So, she's become an indoor cat. It's been less than a day, and I'm kind of apprehensive about how she'll react when she gets done exploring her new house and discovers that we won't let her out, but she's young enough that I think she'll adapt without too much trouble.
By the way, Jaiden, my wife and I are both very allergic to cats ourselves. I've been on Singulair ever since we started letting her come inside, and when my asthma has occasionally started anyway, I've just used a claritin to kind of kick off the Singulair, and not had a problem.
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I might be alergic to cats... If I rub my eyes after touching one they will burn and itch a bit... I hope I'm not. My grandmother was. I also might sneeze. But, it's a good idea to bathe the cat sometimes because it's the dandruff that makes you sneeze.
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Bathing a cat has to be one of the most hilariously sad things I've ever done. When I volunteered at the SPCA, bathing litters of kittens was one of my jobs. I'd come home looking like I'd been run through a couple of rosebushes. Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I've never even attempted to bathe a cat. They hate water so much, and while you can train them to not mind baths if you start when they're kittens, all of our pets have been strays, or gotten from the pound, or taken from people who got tired of mistreating their pets and decided to get rid of them (one dog we got--a beautiful, 4 year old collie mix with a great disposition--we literally rescued from being shot. It's owner was tying it to a fence in preparation for shooting it, with the intention of telling his kids she had run away while they were at school, because he was "tired of her". My parents most recent adoption was a 2 year old hunting dog that hadn't had enough human contact to know his name. His owner just kept him in a kennel in the middle of a pasture, and came out once a week to load the automatic feeder and waterer. I have no idea what that guy was thinking. I mean seriously, what the hell? God I get furious thinking about that. Anyway, when my parents got him to their house, he spent the first couple of months just standing and staring at a wall, freaking out if petted, and doing little else. Happily, they've been able to completely rehabilitate him, and he's now a happy, sweet dog that loves attention, gets along well with the other neighborhood dogs, and spends his spare time bounding around the yard, chasing but never catching squirrels and rabbits.
Good lord, I got pretty off subject there, didn't I? I actually had to scroll up to the top of the message to see what I'd been talking about initially. Bathing cats. Yeah. Never done it.
A coworker of mine bathes his cats regularly, though, and says that he always puts their body in a laundry bag, with just their head sticking out. That way they can't claw. I can't imagine they like that though.
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My cat was stolen by a neighbor who fed him flashier food And they called him Tom Also, we set up a nice bed for my sister's cat to have her babies and she went out and had them in the crawlspace under the house.
That is why my summary reply to the title of this thread would be "Just say no."
P.S. Noemon, I imagine they look like when Lucifer, the cat in the Disney Cinderella, chases the mice through a blouse and gets caught in the sleeve.
Reminds me of a bit from "All Creatures Great and Small". At the vet college, Jim Herriott was known as "not too bright, but by God that man can wrap a cat."
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looks like there's a bit of a difference of opinion on indoor vs outdoor cats. I don't live in the country - never have. It may well be safe for a cat to roam out there, but NOT where I live. I would never in a million years let my kids outside. Even supervised, one ran away two and a half years ago. I'm still broken hearted. Of course, we treat our pets as family, not property. Some people don't do that, and I really can't judge, altho I do have an opinion about that. I got two kittens about a year and two months ago, and they were born outside at a co-worker's place in the "country." They may look, longingly, but they are not allowed past the stoop and they know it. They're quite well entertained and cared for inside. These are not wild creatures anymore. They've been so domesticated over the past 2000 years (or longer) that they are ill equipped to properly care for themselves. So, they're dependent on us, the pink monkeys, and I do my best to fulfill that obligation.
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I'm not sure but I think the averages are more like 2-4 years outside, 13-17 years inside. So we are not talking about one or two years. We're talking about a full life in comfort and health versus a short brutish life filled with injuries and disease. I had one indoor cat who lived to be 20. I do know that a friend who lets her cats out has lost three quite young cats (less than a year old) just in the last 2 years. One young adult male who took to hanging around my house a couple of years ago died within the year when a wild pack of family dogs tore him limb from limb. I had not neutered him and brought him inside because he was a grown tom who sprayed urine everywhere, and those often don't change their habits if neutered and brought indoors. Otherwise he was a fine cat, very gentle and sweet, and I cried so much at his death. I felt terrible that I had not found a way to protect him better than that, when he had certainly adopted me as his human.
Cats have no needs that can't be met easily indoors. They are perfectly happy inside. Outdoor cats are sort of like street people. They can survive for a time, but nobody wants to be a street person if they can help it. And their life expectancy is far far lower than for domesticated indoor humans.
Humans have a responsibility to their domestic animals. We have bred them to be unable to fend for themselves in the wild, so they are under our protection and care for all their lives. We generally do a pretty poor job at that stewardship, unfortunately.
[ July 02, 2004, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Cats are pretty resilient -- much more so than dogs -- as far as being people-dependent. More cats can live in the wild without human owners than dogs.
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I would think that having packs of feral dogs prowling the neighborhood would be a good reason to get the ASPCA involved, and possibly lawsuits for the former owners? As these would be a danger to humans as well?
As I can see there being wild dogs (no previous owners) or family dogs (agressive dogs that have current owners) but I just can't see "wild family dogs." The two former entities have solutions. I have never heard of the latter except in movies like Mad Max.
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Fishtail, I think the problem arises when various people let their family dogs out to roam for the night, and they form large packs and hunt as dogs are wont to do. They can be pretty destructive.
The animal control truck only operates by day, of which these dog owners are aware. They are all probably sure their own sweet pooch can't be causing any problems. Only other people's dogs. But the area I lived in then was only recently gentrified and was previously fairly countrified, so people, I'm sure, probably felt like the leash laws did not have any force of morality behind them.
I was tempted to follow the "country" rules about dealing with destructive stray dogs on my property, i.e. shooting them, but always felt sorry for the dogs, whose fault it was not.
Now I'm up much closer to town, and we don't get so many wild packs of family dogs in these parts, but only the neighbor's dog who is let out in the evening and charges and barks aggressively when people arrive or leave my house. Also he poops in my yard a lot. Why is it that people think their dog's poop is a welcome addition to someone else's yard? And if it's so nice, why aren't they anxious to retain it for their own yard instead?
Again, the problem seems to be one of humans who don't care properly for the animals over whom they've been given stewardship.
[ July 02, 2004, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Hm. I'm thinking there's legal recourse to that situation, especially if the dog threatens visitors to *your* property.
I didn't realize that domesticated dogs raised individually would/could glom into hunting packs so rapidly--my dogs growing up never liked the neighbors' dogs unless there was a fence between them. I would think something like a BB gun would be discouraging enough to encroaching stranger dogs, not harming them enough for lawsuits but definitely sending the recalcitrant owners a solid message. Especially if their negligence results in the loss of someone else's pet.
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I think the best life for a cat is the freedom to come and go as they please. Our cats can go outside as they will to hunt or scratch up trees or whatever. They prefer to do their "business" outside. They come in when it's too hot or too cold or too wet. They purr and cuddle with us when they want company. I did get them both spayed. Sometimes they do get in fights, but the elder kitty holds her own. She rules the neighborhood. The younger kitty is still learning not to mess with raccoons and the like, so sometimes she comes home with minor injuries. If she does, I throw her in the sink and hold her down while I dump hydrogen peroxide on her wounds. That usually works. And she learns.
I guess I see cats as capable of taking care of themselves, and they choose to share their lives with us. But I would not deny them the opportunity to hunt and enjoy the pleasures of Outside. I wouldn't like staying in the house, confined, all day. Why should I force that upon my cat?
Of course, it might be different if I lived in a city..
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From what I read on the web, we're really the only country where a large number of people choose to confine cats to the house, and it's a relatively recent new trend.
To tie this in to another Hatrack topic, I have to wonder if this is a similar situation to the "expert opinions" regarding breastfeeding in the 50s. Thirty years from now, will pet experts be looking back on universal cat confinement and shake their heads in wonder?
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posted
Well, it's been borne out again and again in my 30 plus years of keeping cats and taking care of stray cats and talking to other people about their cats.
I think if they still let cats roam in the old country, it's because there is the thought "Well, what the heck? They're only animals! Who cares if we lose a few?" The reason I quit letting mine go outside was I didn't think of them as mere animals. They are family members, as important to me as children. I would lose sleep wondering where they were if they were out late, and so on. That they should be injured through my lack of care was unbearable to me. So the idea of losing one for me is not sort of a "that's life" thing, but a great grief like losing a child.
Again, my own experience bears out what I read about the statistics on differential longevity. Ask your vet. Mine is the first one who suggested it to me, and I held off for a long time because of the cats' own wishes. But he finally convinced me it's the only responsible way to take care of your cat.
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posted
Years ago, for whatever reason, my mother decided never to have an indoor pet again. Since then we have had dozens of cats and dogs.
A few of them have, to be sure, died in rather unpleasant fashions, and we had one cat that was seriously injured by a poisonous snake. But on average, the ones we have kept (rather than donating to someone else) have lived around 10 years or so, often more.
Maybe it's a difference in location...I don't know.
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quote:I think if they still let cats roam in the old country, it's because there is the thought "Well, what the heck? They're only animals! Who cares if we lose a few?"
See, ak, I can understand that some people want to keep their cats indoors. I even agree that, in some areas, it's just not feasible to let a cat outside (though in those areas I personally choose not to get a cat).
But what I find really frustrating is your continuing characterization of the opposition as heartless and cruel. Do you really think that's the only explanation for a person letting their cat outside, that they don't care if they die?
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posted
I'm not sure that longevity is necessarily the best measure for determining whether someone is kind to animals. Lab rats statistically live longer than those in the wild, too. Zoo animals outlive their wild counterparts. But is it the BEST life for them? It is too arrogant for us, humans, to decide.
I am starting to feel really guilty about my daughter's pet gerbil, who has lived all his life in a cage. He would have been happier, I think, as a wild rodent in the desert where he could dig to his heart's delight. He might not have lived so long, but he could spend that life doing what is in his genes and instincts to do.
For people who keep cats, as long as you are helping take care of your animal's need for companionship, exercise, etc., who am I to judge? But those who keep cats indoors and then don't give them acceptable ways to exercise and scratch are not any more responsible than someone who never lets a cat come in the door.
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quote:when various people let their family dogs out to roam for the night
We have a neighbor who does this. Drives me nuts, because her dogs come onto our property and hassle our dogs. (Our dogs have a dog door, and 1.5 acres of trees and grass surrounded by an Invisible Fence, so they may go outdoors whenever they want. They like to sleep outside under the trees on cool summer nights.) I don't want to have to shut my dogs in at night, but I don't like the idea of them getting beaten on by the (more aggressive) neighbor dogs while trying to defend their yard, either.
I can't imagine why the neighbor lady lets them run loose at night. This is north central New Jersey, not rural Kansas or Colorado. You'd think that the deer carcasses that adorn our roadways would be a good indicator of what happens to critters crossing the road at night in this area.
(I wonder if Invisible Fences work for cats? We've had a great experience with our fence and the dogs. It really keeps them in our yard, and was actually much cheaper than a physical fence would have been, since we buried the wire and installed the system ourselves. The younger dog will chase deer across the property, to the edge of the correction field, and then come to a screeching halt so as not to enter the field. Our only problem has been that we forgot to remove the IF collars when we took the dogs to the reservoir for a swim, and both collars went on the fritz some time afterward and had to be replaced. Expensive!)
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posted
I've wondered about the invisible fence thing for cats--I was really concerned about moving my cat from our previous house, which was rural, to our new one, which is urban.
So far, though, she's been doing very well in the new house. She's settled in completely, and much to my surprise she hasn't even made an attempt to get out the door. I expected that the first few months of getting her used to being indoors would be an enormous pain, but so far it hasn't been. I expect that it helps that this house is much larger than our old place, and has four levels (2 floors of living space, a basement, and an attic--it isn't gargantuan) for her to play in.
If anything, she's been more affectionate since the move than she was before, and she's a very affectionate cat. Part of this, I'm sure, is that C and I are points of familiarity in an unfamiliar place, but I think that part of it may also be that we took her with us. Although quite young when she chose us, she'd obviously had people before, and I expect that they were college students that turned her loose when they graduated. When we got a U-Haul and started loading up our stuff, she was very, very upset with us. I may be crediting her with more mental ability than she actually has, but it seems like she's very relieved to have been taken with, and feels very reassured by it.
Don't mother cats sometimes relocate their kittens, first preparing the new nest, and then carrying the kittens there one by one? Maybe that gives her an instinctual mental framework for this move?
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posted
Years ago, when I was living on a boat in South Florida, we talked with the folks at Invisible Fence about using their product for a cat. The rep actually laughed at us and told us that cats would rather be shocked a million times than mind the boundary set by the fence.
I imagine it's possible they've come up with some method of making it work, but I suspect the strong will and independence we like about cats would make the product ineffective.
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quote: Don't mother cats sometimes relocate their kittens, first preparing the new nest, and then carrying the kittens there one by one? Maybe that gives her an instinctual mental framework for this move?
Yes, they do--in the case of our cats, usually to the worst place imaginable. (The most sheltered spots around our house are amidst the machinery and broken junk that Dad putters with; there's real danger of smashed kittens there, but the momma cats don't comprehend that. )
On a more positive note, cat experts inform me that cats think of humans as parents/family, so you may very well be right.
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posted
BtL, do some people want to be street people?
Noemon, that's an interesting theory. Cats generally don't care for moving, but mine took to the new house right away this time (it's also nicer and more spacious than we had before) and didn't seem at all upset. In fact, they seemed very happy about it from the start. I think maybe being indoors helps this process a lot. Maybe because the familiar objects with their same smells (rugs, furniture) are spread throughout their whole environment.
I've also found that since the move, nobody wants to try to get out anymore. Maybe because the outdoors here is strange new territory, which they would be quite tenative about exploring at first. This means they are less likely to make a dash for it and rashly commit themselves to the complete unknown.
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posted
Reading this thread made me think of our dog. For the past few days, he's been misbehaving and refusing to come in. He's also been trying to dig under the chain link fence and get into our neighbor's yard. Finally I went out there to figure out what the deal was, and laying just a foot away from the fence was a cat collar. Obviously, just the smell of a collar is enough to turn him into a blood-thirsty beast...heehee. We had to grab it and let him sniff it lots and lots.
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ak, at the risk of derailing this thread, yes they do. One of the biggest changes to Toronto's efforts to help the homeless has been the realization that some (not just a handful, a large enough number to be meaningful, although I don't have stats on hand) people really want to be there. It requires a change of strategies in how you treat these people and what services you provide. I think, in some ways, it's the same mentality as what drives people to be hermits. It's a way of removing one's self from society but not from civilization. If that makes any sense.
As an aside, I read in the paper that the Hermit of Gully Lake passed away. He's been living alone in the woods for over 60 years, kind of strange to have him gone.
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