6 thoughts on “CATS Will Recieve Goodwill”

1. Hi, Just wanted to say what a great blog this is…sad at times, funny others, and very interesting. I also wanted to write to ask for some info about two feral cats that live on our balcony. They are all black feral I know not strays..they were part of a group of kittens that moved up to live roofs of the buildings around our apartment block…our apartment block is only 2 floors high but lower than the roof line of the buildings behind us..so they can travel from one roof to the other. Where do I start..we moved from the United Kingdom to Portugal just over a year ago with our little sweetie west highland terrier Sarah and our beautiful old birman Kadbury who for 3 years had kidney disease and lived a good life in the UK hunting and catching as many animals as he could..when he moved here it was a lot harder for him but he was ill and old and we wasnt actually expecting him to live as long as he did..he was a very special cat..naughty as all heck but we loved him…he loved being hoovered..dont ask me why but he did…he would roll from his back to his tummy to get his body hoovered up with curtain cleaner part of the hoover…silly old cat…when you didnt pay him enough attention he would knock things off the sides on purpose…totally spoilt but sorely missed!

   Anyway last winter we were on our way home from 10 pin bowling which is up in the tourist area called Praia da Rocha, it was a cold, windy wet night and I heard a kitten crying…it was really making a horrendous noise…we went past a hotel and there standing outside was a little grey and white kitten. Our westie had caught sight of her and she dived under a temporary police station building…I asked in the hotel who the kitten belonged to and they said they didnt know but that she had been sitting outside for 4 days just howling…i said did they feed her and they said yes a few fish heads…so off i went to see if i could tempt her out..she came out to eat the fish heads they threw down for her and then came straight over to me…i picked her up, put her inside my jacket and she went fast to sleep, we got in a taxi with the dog in a bag, dogs are not allowed in cars unless they are in bag (i think they mean box but it doesnt translate) and we went home! Kadbury didnt care when she turned up, he just did his usual and walked into the kitchen to eat ignoring her with his nose in the air…the dog Sarah chased her but she just hissed and growled at the dog who ran into the living room with her tail between her legs. We took her to the vets the next morning, wormed, injections, tests for all the nasties and then scheduled her to be sterilized a few days later. The two ferals have been coming onto the balcony for the 4 years we have owned the apartment before we moved down here permanently and they killed our orange and lemon tree..eventually i thought this is ridiculous so i put down a litter tray which they use…then i started feeding them regularly because the female has had 3 sets of kittens to my knowledge probably more and they have all died either from hunger, dehydration or disease and I want to do the right thing..so i thought i fed them i could try to get them used to humans teach them that i am not going to hurt them and maybe it wouldnt be such a horrible process for them when i do catch them. However, we have now decided that we need a bigger place to live..the apartment was great when we used to come down for holidays but its useless for living in all of the time especially as its only 2 bedrooms and we have 4 grandchildren..so we have been looking at bigger villas…we have found one we like and I feel like i should take the two ferals with us but I dont know how they will feel about that…they sleep in a little house we bought for them…they are at the kitchen door at 8 on the dot in the morning and 6 on the dot for their dinner at night and they play on the balcony much to the disgust of our kitty..she detests them…and has fought with them…they have been wormed I managed do that in their food, but I have not been able to catch them because I dont want to get them sterilized until we move and can move the cats with us. Now we have had a new problem the male cat has not been around for two days now…and I am left wondering if he has got stuck in somewhere, or if he is sick or if he has been injured by someone..what has happened to him I dont know..the funny thing is this morning she came out of her house and no male cat..she disappeared all day and came home at around 5 to eat but normally they would be on the balcony all day but something has happened and I dont know what? I was wondering if with your huge amount of knowledge you could tell me if this is normal behaviour for a male to go off and/or if its something more sinister? Also is it possible to catch the female and male and move them to another location once they have been sterilized. I cant leave them now I have started feeding them…they are gradually becoming less afraid whereas before they would hiss at me, I have actually been able to touch them but just that a touch and then they jump off the outdoor table and go under the table..they will only come back to eat if i am not there once i have done this.

   Any help you can give on what might have happened to the male and what I should do if he doesnt come back with the female would it be safe to move her to a new location. It is a relatively safe place…there is large empty housing plot beside the house full of places she can hide…there is also a tunnel under our house where the water filter is and also a golf course at the back of the house…what do you think?

   Kind regards, Diane

2. Ps Sorry its so long, xx

3. Diane,

   First off thank you for caring about the welfare of these cats who otherwise may just be ignored. On the state of the male cat, he is a tomcat and if he has gone out “cattin” his range is quite wide. In Roger Taber’s excellent book: 100 ways to understand your cat In the chapter The Territorial Cat he embarks on an experiment and observes outside strays. He found that cats living in towns, villages and sort of uncrowded un-citylike conditions, the males (not neutered) could range up to five acres. The females only 2. If she was threatened, he would attack the predator and could have been chased away. It’s hard to speculate what actually happened to him and it may be that he will return in time.

   I can only tell what I would do. I would trap the female, get her in to be spayed (during the move would be the best time) I would ask the vet to keep her caged until all my home was empty and then I would go and get her and take her to the new home. I would keep her inside for at least 3 weeks or more seriously) by then you will be able to tell if she is capable of adapting to indoor life or if she wants to be outside.

   If your intention isn’t to bring her indoors and socialize her. I would keep her in a VERY large cage or dog crate inside one of the outbuildings for at least 3 weeks or more until she realizes this is her new place. Before letting her out, I would sprinkle the ground with catnip and kibble and put out large bowls of food and water so she understands that this is home base.

   That’s what I would do, but as most people can attest- when it comes to stray cats, I do go a bit bonkers. 🙂

4. Hi MaryAnne: Looking for outside shelter (Chicago – cold winter – just had snow) for what I think is a feral tortie cat. I don’t see her every day, but just when I think she belongs to someone she shows up and consumer a lot of food and water. Saw your reviews on Amazon. Which do you prefer – the tubular looking cathouse of the barn? You mentioned/reviewed both.
   Also liked your blog about coffee warmers to keep water from freezing.
   Thanks for any feedback. Brigitte

5. I have to say that I prefer the catbarn (and so do the cats) I think maybe because it resembles more of a cardboard box and the doors are water tight. It came with catnip, but that wasn’t even necessary to use to tempt any cat to use it. I just wish right now- I had three more! LOL It was 0 degrees here!

6. Hi MaryAnne, Just to let you know that we didn’t manage to get the feral cat spayed in time for the big move which I thought went rather well…we moved the feral cat over to the house first…we managed to catch her using a little bit of deception but it worked and all went well…I put her on the balcony that she would be living on (the house had no internal doors so shutting her in a room was not possible and as we have 8 bedrooms, 8 en suites and 6 floors in total to the whole house we just were not able to get doors on any of the rooms in time for the move..plus we wanted to get the electricity back in the house first (they stripped all the electric cable out of the walls so I complete electrical refit was needed). So we decided to put her on her own balcony off the kitchen there are two one facing the front of the house that leads to ground level and one facing the river which she would need to climb off. So I moved her over in the car in the cat travel case and she wasn’t happy but we got there…I opened up the case put her little house that she sleeps in beside it, put her food and water down and there she stayed all day while we moved over with the other animals. She didn’t come out all day and I thought it best to leave her to get acclimatized. Our other indoor cat was all over the house we moved her over last because I didn’t want her escaping out of the house because she had not been on ground level since she was a baby when we found her…so I didn’t want her getting out too soon, I wanted her to get used to the house which is rather big.

   So I thought all was going well and then that I couldn’t find the indoor kitty…I called her and called her but she wouldn’t come, and then when I got up in the morning the feral cat was not on the balcony…OMG I had lost both cats…I couldn’t find the indoor kitty and I didn’t know how the outdoor kitty had got off the balcony…we later determined she had jumped onto the little house that is attached to the big house for the air con units and that she wasn’t able to jump back up. So that was that I had lost both cats! I was very upset that day and then I said to my husband they both must be getting hungry so I shall put some food down on the ground level for the feral cat and I will go hunting around the house to see if I can find the indoor cat….we had two rooms both filled to the brim with boxes, we were storing some friends boxes and furniture in the house as well as a room with our 96 boxes from the UK and our furniture! I looked through that whole room shifting boxes and I couldn’t find her…so then I went to the next room with our friends stuff in it and right at the very back of the boxes was our cat hiding…I brought her out and fed her and then she ran straight back behind those boxes again!

   The feral cat I called and called but no answer and I said to my husband I was very worried because what if she didn’t come back and I hadn’t got her spayed in time….I felt that if I had got her spayed and she decided she didn’t want to live with us, then at least she wouldn’t be hounded by males and would be able to catch things if she was on the ground. I put her house down on ground level and then some food and water and waited..I called her and called her but no answer and then all of a sudden I heard this tiny little noise…we had some bushes pulled out beside the house and she was in the bushes…so I called her again and she came running over…making a terrific racket..it felt like she was really happy to see me…thank heaven I had found her! Anyway to cut a really long story shorter…the cats are both in cat heaven now…one stays on the rough ground all day long on one side of the house, the other stays on the rough ground on the other side of the house and never the twain shall met..well they do on occasion but at least now they aren’t fighting over space! Plus the feral cat has decided she wants to be closer to us and lives outside the kitchen on the balcony facing the road and sleeps there, eats there and wants to be stroked and made a fuss of! The weather has been bad so we haven’t been able to get her into be spayed…here in Portugal the vets don’t have space to keep animals onsite so I didn’t want her getting sick from the cold as well as having problems with her wound, so we decided to keep her on the contraceptive pill until the better weather comes…(yes it does get really cold here, no snow but we have had two lots of frost on the car windows this year which is unheard of here in the Algarve). Anyway I thought you would be interested in our cat antics. I hope our story keeps you amused. Regards, Diane

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