Providing Food and Shelter For An Abadoned Colony By Another...

About 4 years ago, I got a call from a friend informing me about an alley with a colony that had close to about 15 or so cats in it. The story goes that apparently a member from another shelter started on the project, abandoned it, and never finished it up. I was asked if I would be willing to help TNR it since it was close to my house. I said sure thing. Not many people trap or practice TNR in winter. I always do. The cats are looking for food and its great to get AHEAD of kitten season to prevent it rather than deal with it when it comes.

Thankfully, the area was an enclosed protected one, so we were able to prebait traps. I set up traps, all aligned next to one another, and in other sporadic places in the yard. We laid tarps down on the ground and placed newspaper and straw in the traps and then placed tarps over them to make them cozy and warm. The cats were fed out of the zip-tied open traps for a week and then we went back and cut the zip-ties on the night we planned to trap and placed food in all of them. Within seconds all of our traps were filled with cats.

This picture is back from 2010 when I first got the call about these cats. 

Back in 2010 when I trapped the remaining cats from this project that another shelter walked away from

I pre-baited the traps for a week and zip-tied them open. On my trapping night, I cut them and voila all the traps were filled with cats. I made my traps cozy with straw and surrounded it with tarps for warmth since it was winter.

Our Feeding Station 5years later

We provide the new old man caretaker with food every other week and leave it on his porch for him

We are so happy to see that there are still cats at this location that we had TNR 5-6 years ago. Some of the colony moved on, but now that we provide food etc the rest have stayed and as you can see are healthy. Manage, Manage, Manage.

There use to be an old man who lived in the apartment building next door who fed the cats. Through the years, I would consistently ride my bike down there to check on everyone and noticed there weren't many cats left and I never saw the old man. After inquiring with an another elderly man tenant, I found out the other old man moved and this man started to take over feeding the cats. Well he was feeding them Spanish beans and rice. As we all know, older people are on a fixed income and cannot afford the basic needs. From that day forward, we have been providing the man with cat food every other week and place it on the porch for him. We also provided him with a feeding station. The cats are his family and the cats are an integral part of the neighborhood. Again, I can't state enough, it's not just about TNR its about making sure the cats are taken care of after. Here are a few pictures from the trapping 4 years ago and from pictures of food that I just dropped off to him again yesterday along with a picture of one of the cats who is still there today who was trapped 4 years ago. We are so happy to see there has never been a non ear tip cat at this location since.