Our barn cat, do you have one?

[69 Sleeper Bee]

...and chickens!

She knows not to mess with them at all. It’s funny she hangs out there with them a lot.
Probably wondering why I feed all the good scraps to them and not her

 

[69 Sleeper Bee]

mine is fat and lazy.

View attachment 1342467

Holy crap

 

[Xp29h]

i live next door to my mom, she has an old barn and as it should be an old barn cat that took up residence a few years ago. She and I feed it, my Chesapeake chases it but it hangs around. It will come within 15-20 feet but that is it. She can get within a couple feet but it’s hands off.

 

[Scott Engelhardt]

I have several barn cats if someone is looking for one! I had 3 that were all fixed. Then I let a stray move in and she had kittens, now I have 8 barn cats!

 

[Duckmanreno]

Don’t have a barn but we adopted the semi stray neighborhood cat. Probably with us 60%of the time.
He is a born killer, birds, mice and even a cotton tail.

 

[YY1]

We had a mother and kitten traipse through the back yard a few times over the last 3 weeks or so.

They would go into the garage and have a mouse catching lesson.
We saw the kitten catch several.

As of 3 days ago, we haven't seen the mother, but the kitten is still there.
It would be odd if mother showed it where the pickens are good, and then just left.
Something might have happened to her, I suppose.

She sure brought junior to the right place.

For some reason, he will come to my wife but not me even though I have taken him food.
He does purr and let her pet him.
It will let me pet it if she is there.

Could be socialized, I'm guessing.
First order of business is to neuter.

...and of course there's the hurricane.

 

[Fran Blacker]

View attachment 1348627
Don’t have a barn but we adopted the semi stray neighborhood cat. Probably with us 60%of the time.
He is a born killer, birds, mice and even a cotton tail.

That look says he means business!

 

[Scott Engelhardt]

View attachment 1348627
Don’t have a barn but we adopted the semi stray neighborhood cat. Probably with us 60%of the time.
He is a born killer, birds, mice and even a cotton tail.

Wow if you were not so far away, I would think that was my cat Bandit

 

[YY1]

Well, barn cat is in the house for the hurricane.

He actually looks just like those two posted above!

He's wallowing around and purring.

Met three of the other cats with only one hiss, and that was our "stinker" cat.

No sign of mom again.

I battened down the garage doors but she can get in through a missing lower panel if she needs to.

 

[SteveSS]

It's funny, we looked through around 3000 pictures on the game cam today. Probably about 5 weeks worth. It's set up on the front porch of grandma's house at the ranch where Bobcat lives. He appears to be guarding the porch from a tabletop there. He's there watching day and night like a sentry. No deer, raccoons, squirrels, birds, or other cats have shown up on the cam like the pictures I have shown you before. He must scare them away.

 

[Outlawd]

In my neck of the woods you have outside cats or you get inside mice, I'd choose cats over mice any day of the week. We had a black cat named Jinks that hunted just about everything on my acreage and my buddy's acreage a half mile down the road. He was a true natural born killer. Jinks kept us safe from mice, rabbits, birds, even squirrels for 5 years or so then disappeared. I think he probably tried to take on a badger one night and finally met his match.

 

[patrick66]

My cat is a tabby cat named Russia. She is about 12 now, and an always-outdoors cat. She is half-blind, as one eye was injured in a fight with another cat in 2018. That doesn't stop her from taking care of business with the field mice, rats, rabbits, and moles. She keeps that population down to a minimum, for certain. She is also quite camera-shy, as I might have a dozen pics of her over the years.

 

[sam dupont]

Have what I think are semi-feral cats. They won't come to me, but appear to be fed. They like to hang out under my deck and that is where mice would probably gain entry. If I leave the door open, they can't resist and come in to sniff. As a rule, I don't let them as I am afraid of spraying.

 

[Duckmanreno]

Wow if you were not so far away, I would think that was my cat Bandit

View attachment 1348830

Good looking cat you have. More Tuxedo cats around then I thought.
I was actually in Iowa picking up my new truck in January.

 

[MiradaMegaCab]

Faithy Cat, she’d drink BudLime like there was no tomorrow! She’d lick the condensation off the bottle and lap up beer that I poured out onto the floor for her.

 

[JDmac72chrgr]

Faithy Cat, she’d drink BudLime like there was no tomorrow! She’d lick the condensation off the bottle and lap up beer that I poured out onto the floor for her. View attachment 1349404

Member of the "PIT CREW"

 

[YY1]

Former barn cat is now officially ours and officially an inside cat.

Adapting very well. Playing with 2 of the three younger ones and much less hissing from the seniors.

We located a family on the next street over that brought "Romeo", an almost identical sister, and their mother home from the dollar store parking lot.

Not sure why they only wanted to keep the female kitten, and have her inside while letting the other two run free outside.

To their credit, they have already found the local low cost spay/neuter clinic.

We've been in contact with them a few times since.

We are trying to decide what to do with the mother. She is young and sweet.

IMO it's just wrong for both kittens to be inside only and mom to be left out.

 

[68BabyBlue]

My wife and I went from having no pets to three cats a few years back. Johnny, far left, was a true feral kitten, didn't even have a barn, was living in the woods. A friend who has socialized many feral kittens over the years placed him with us. Abby, center, and Zoe came to us through a local shelter, after their pregnant mother was found in an alley. Abby is going crazy with my screen as I try to post this.

 

[Sam69sat]

Former barn cat is now officially ours and officially an inside cat.

Adapting very well. Playing with 2 of the three younger ones and much less hissing from the seniors.

We located a family on the next street over that brought "Romeo", an almost identical sister, and their mother home from the dollar store parking lot.

Not sure why they only wanted to keep the female kitten, and have her inside while letting the other two run free outside.

To their credit, they have already found the local low cost spay/neuter clinic.

We've been in contact with them a few times since.

We are trying to decide what to do with the mother. She is young and sweet.

IMO it's just wrong for both kittens to be inside only and mom to be left out.

Catch the mother and have her spayed before she has another litter because it won't take long. Our local humane society has a spay/neuter program setup with the local vet clinics. They ask for a donation. I usually give $35-50 per cat. They've spayed/neutered 16 cats for me in the past two years. I get a lot of strays showing up that people dump or they wander in from town.

 

[YY1]

As referenced above, we have a local 501c3 that does spay/neuter and a 3 year rabies vac for $30 and tips the ear.
It's first come, first served starting at 6:00 Monday mornings.
Other 501c3 TNR groups can pre-book in volume which can cut into the "first served" portion.
That is plan B.

The last I checked it was $80 to not tip the ear.
We'd like to see if we can get her adopted out. Most folks don't want to adopt an ear tipped cat.
That is plan A.

Plan C would be for us to keep her.
The caveat is that we already have 2 adult females who can be a bit territorial.

Unfortunately the TNR program run by SPCA folded up due to poor management and a "just kill them faster" mentality of some of the locals including an apathetic stance from the Sheriff's Animal Control office. SPCA lost a quarter of a million dollars in specific, guaranteed funding from a single generous benefactor when they folded their program and fired the trapper who that funding was tied to. I was friends with that guy, and inherited a few really nice traps from him.

In the past 12 years we have TNR'd around 100 cats, and fostered/re homed around 30.
We currently assist with caring for two feral colonies each with about 30 cats.

Curiously, my wife spotted a cat with a tipped ear on the street where the people who found Romeo live.
...and we didn't do it. That's the first one we've seen. We have done a few extremely feral cats in the neighborhood in the past, but they all almost immediately left the area (or otherwise vanished).

I'd like to know the story on that, as the neighborhood is predominantly a dog neighborhood.
I'd be very pleasantly surprised if semitone else is doing TNR in our neighborhood.