Kittenbirth!

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So, Matt and I were on the way to find lunch and run some typical Saturday errands earlier today when his mom called, asking if we could possibly stop by and help her and Matt's dad troubleshoot a leaky washing machine. Thus, once we'd eaten we headed over to the parental homestead, and as luck would have it, we arrived pretty much just in time to see Bella show up at the feeding station. Unfortunately I didn't have my good camera with me -- just the one in my cell phone -- so the small picture below is the only one I was able to get of her:

When I took the photo I didn't know that the kittens were THAT close to emerging, but it was clear that something was going on. Despite the fact that she was still engaging in normal cattish activities like eating and playing, Bella was definitely walking with a bit of a "waddling" gait, and her back end was covered in a clear, slick substance that I soon realized must be amniotic fluid (meaning her water had broken). She wandered around the patio for about half an hour, then proceeded to make a beeline for a cardboard box Matt's mom had placed some old cushions and bathroom rugs in near the back of the house. And for a while she just sat in the box, breathing heavily and slow-blinking her eyes.

Meanwhile, something very interesting was going on with the other cats in the vicinity. There were maybe 4 or 5 of them, and before going to lie down in her box, Bella actually went over and approached each of them in turn, gave them a very intense look, waited for them to respond, and then walked away. Most of her feline cohorts simply gave her a brief sniff, blink, or nod, the one exception being Toby (the resident Queen Bee Boss Cat of the yard), who hissed and then trotted off looking annoyed.

I really wish I'd been able to film these interactions because I'd never seen anything quite like them before. Again, I can't even begin to offer an exact cat-to-English translation, but it was clear that something was being communicated. And then once Bella had taken her place in the box, I saw no less than three other female cats (who were all spayed, mind you) arrange themselves in a semicircle around her at a distance of maybe 10-15 feet from where she lay. As for me, I sat on a bench on the patio. I would have gone into the house but Bella didn't seem bothered by my presence -- in fact, she seemed to prefer it when I was there. At one point I did briefly get up to use the house bathroom, only to be informed by Matt's mom that when I'd entered the house, Bella had sat up, looked in my direction, and meowed!

But anyway...I'll get to the actual kitten-birthing I saw. It was simultaneously more awkward-looking and less gross than I'd expected it would be. Bella didn't explode with fluids or poop everywhere when the kitten started emerging, which was kind of a relief (I've read WAY too many horrifying birth stories apparently). What she did do, though, once the head began poking out was get up out of the box and walk over to the little rug under the food bowl. I think at that point she needed to stand up and move around more than the box allowed so that gravity could assist the kitten in popping out. And pop out the kitten did! Seriously, it was like Bella just did this one massive forward-sideways PUSH thing once she was standing up and suddenly there was a whole kitten AND a placenta dangling from her nethers.

At that point Bella seemed to sort of "shift into high gear". She was a little freaked out by what had just happened, and (this is the part I would describe as "awkward") spent about 20 seconds running in place in a tight circle with the kitten hanging down doing head-spins on the concrete (all the while going EEE! EEEEEE!). Needless to say, I got a bit worried at this point and hoped Bella wasn't too wigged out to cut the umbilical cord. But thankfully she figured it out and within another few seconds had the kitten in her mouth by the scruff. Which she then proceeded to carry off to the bushes. I had been hoping she'd go back to the box to have the rest, but my guess is at that point her instinct to seek deeper cover kicked in.

...so, to make a long story slightly shorter, as of right now I don't know whether she is even finished birthing yet. I will have to check with Matt's mom. Right now, though, I am just glad that Bella seemed to be getting through the process without complications despite her small size. Ideally Matt's mom will be able to coax her into the house where she will be welcome to nest in the bathroom for as long as she likes -- this will help immensely with both keeping Bella safe until she is strong enough to be spayed and with making sure the kittens can start acclimating to humans as soon as possible. As much as I know a feral cat can have a plenty worthwhile life without much, if any, human contact, being able to adopt out kittens is a very important part of good colony management as it helps maintain a stable-to-decreasing population (which means better living conditions for all the cats concerned). And in this case Matt even has a co-worker who may be able to adopt one of the kittens, provided they survive (which is still touch-and-go and will be until it's established that they're all actually born, and alive, and nursing, etc.). I'm planning on trying to make a case for her adopting two!

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Coraline, Calendar Cat!

A while back, on a whim, I submitted the photo below (which I've posted on this blog previously, but am re-posting for easy reference) of Coraline climbing the orange tree in my yard to Alley Cat Allies in response to a call for pictures for their 2013 calendar.

I didn't expect anything to come of it, but lo and behold, I got an email last week indicating my picture had been accepted. So now, presuming the designers can fit the photo to their layout (there was a disclaimer in the note I received) Cora gets to be a calendar cat.

Of course this isn't some kind of earth-shaking event, but Alley Cat Allies is definitely doing good work (advocating for TNR and encouraging/educating people to take responsibility for the cats in their community) and I am delighted to be able to contribute something that they can use in their literature and publications. I suspect Cora would approve as well, given she herself started out as a feral kitten and if not for the material on ACA's website I might not have had the confidence to actually try my hand at Trap-Neuter-Adopt (for Cora and her brothers) or Trap-Neuter-Return (which many of their colony cousins have since benefitted from).

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Shifting Feral Colony Dynamics

I've definitely observed a shift in colony dynamics over the past two weeks or so. The last few times Matt and I have stopped over at his parents', I've gone on little expeditions around the neighborhood and tried to take a bit of a "cat inventory". Most of that area is houses, but there are also two parks within easy walking distance and a number of large-ish fieldy areas -- it is apparent why so many cats choose to live there, given the amount and type of space available.

Anyway, the "shift" I'm noting seems to have to do with which cats are likely to be found where -- in addition to which cats are likely to be found at all.

I saw one cat come right into the yard whom I've never seen before -- a strapping young tabby tom who proceeded to prance around, spritzing shrubs and whatnot, and altogether looking quite pleased with himself. No clue where he came from, but I'm definitely glad we managed to get four of the females spayed prior to his arrival!

I also spotted something like five or six black cats, spread across several yards and lots. There are a LOT of black cats in that colony (which I've read is common in random-bred populations; over time you start seeing coats default to brown tabby and black, because those patterns confer the best camouflage, or something like that). I can tell them apart pretty readily once I've seen them a few times, by way of differing face/body shapes and movement patterns, but I am nonetheless becoming really appreciative of ear-tipping, given the fact that some of these kitties really only ever grace us with rapid-fire cameo appearances every now and then.

Speaking of which...at one point (when we were standing in his mom's living room) Matt motioned out the door at one particular black cat and said, "That one looks like Shadow". I glanced out myself and lo and behold, Coal was slinking out from under a car!

I was REALLY relieved to see her because frankly I'd actually gotten to the point of presuming she was probably dead. She's the mother of my three youngsters, Suzie, Radar, and, well, probably a whole lot of others who've come and gone over the past few years (Coal herself is six or seven years old). She's very distinctive-looking, though, especially given that she's extremely large for a female cat. Not fat-large -- if not pregnant she tends toward the wiry/rangy side -- but just big, long, squarish bone structure. And Shadow is the spitting image of his mom in a lot of ways, especially in the face.

So yeah. Coal is one tough lady. And she's smart. She's had to be both to survive as long as she has. I would dearly love to trap her and get her spayed but something tells me I'm going to have to build another drop trap in order to do that, because she's way too cautious to get anywhere near the cage-type traps that we've been putting out. But in any case, it is good at least to know she's alive, albeit looking rather ragged.

I've also twice now seen a cat that I think is supposed to be black...but who seems to be missing all his/her fur on one side! S/he is very skinny but ate like a horse during the last feeding session I observed so I'm guessing there's something skin-related going on rather than a worse, systemic thing, but it was still pretty alarming to see. My tentative guess is that this poor kitty has flea allergy dermatitis, given that s/he looks a heck of a lot like this, but it's hard to tell for sure.

Either way, if s/he ends up in the trap that will enable closer inspection as well as administration of some sort of topical flea treatment. In the meantime, though, I am seriously wondering if there's something safe we might be able to sprinkle on the food that could help reduce the parasite load for the ferals. Any suggestions would certainly be appreciated.

But back to my original point about shifting colony dynamics. I really shouldn't be surprised to see this sort of thing at all. I tend to think of spay/neuter purely in the sense of it being Kitty Birth Control, but it also impacts hormones. Which means that it will also likely impact the social organization of the colony, what with far fewer cats engaged in courtship and mating and all that accompanies those activities.

The newbie tabby male I described above has probably just moved in to fill what he sees as an opening. I didn't realize before the extent to which Blue was "guarding" the yard over the past few months (in addition to guarding his adopted babies). With him gone, and with JB/Tuxie neutered, there's been a decided drop in testosterone as of late. And I never noticed this until now, but in general it seems like the majority of long-term colony members are female, both spayed and unspayed. There's a much higher "turnover rate" with the boys, and quite a few have just seemed to disappear as mysteriously as they've appeared.

TNR Report #3: Herding Cats, For Real! Also, Mr. Mom.

Whew, what a week! Short version: two more cats have been TNRed at the time of this writing, which means six cats total from the colony have been spayed or neutered since the beginning of last week.

Not bad, and definitely a good start, but I was really hoping for eight (especially given we had eight appointments reserved). The Humane Society folks assured me that this sort of thing happens all the time, as you can't really guarantee you will actually get the number of cats you've made appointments for, but still. Color me annoyed.

Monday night's session went well: we managed to catch Dominique's shy sister Michelle (who is all black with a little white "locket" on her chest):


(Michelle watching me and the camera from a table)

...and a little marble tabby girl we haven't named yet who may well be one of Mimi's siblings judging from her size. So that was good.


(Tiny tabby girl with the high beams on -- this is actually the clearest picture I've got of her thus far)

Wednesday night's session, on the other hand, was...chaotic, to say the least. Matt and I stuck it out monitoring and attending to traps well into the late eve‌ning, but ultimately had to admit defeat (our own kitties were home waiting for their dinner, after all!). Matt's parents said they would monitor the traps for a while after we went home and I am sure they did, but I haven't heard from them yet today and I'm not optimistic that anyone actually ended up being trapped.

See, things started out promising. I began by cleaning the traps and setting up all four of them (three regular-sized and one kitten-sized) out in the general area frequented by the cats. At that point it was still light out, and as they'd not been fed yet, kitties were starting to mill around the patio area anticipating their dinner.

Then, just as I started getting ready to actually bait the traps, Toby (former rescue kitten, now the resident Territorial Boss Lady) decided for whatever reason to go around and spritz her signature scent on said traps.


(Toby disapproves of this ridiculousness!)

And when her (feral) younger brother Gryff got wind of his sister's aromatic graffiti, of course he had to go and overmark it with his own eau-de-pheromone.

Anyhow, since Toby's determination to mark the equipment wasn't evident on trapping days prior, my guess is that this time I didn't clean the smells of the other cats (not to mention the "clinic smell" which can be a major feline anxiety trigger) off the traps well enough. Needless to say, lesson learned! Prior to the next session I will most assuredly make sure the traps are liberally sprayed with enzymatic cleaner and thoroughly wiped down and air-dried.

[The newer enzyme sprays ("Nature's Miracle", "Anti Icky Poo", and similar) are really good at destroying the proteins or whatever the stuff in cat urine is that flashes up a giant SPRAY HERE! sign once applied to an object, but you really have to give them time to work, and last night I didn't get a chance to do that in any more than a cursory manner. ]

I may also try to corral Toby in the house or garage next time, seeing as even when she wasn't spraying she seemed determined to meddle in every way possible with what I was doing (she ended up IN a trap at one point when her curiosity got the better of her). She is very much like Nikki in that once she sets her mind on something there's just no arguing with her.

Mind you, of course I don't think ill of Toby for her actions. From a feline standpoint she was acting in accordance with perfectly sensible Cat Logic, and in general she's this awesome sweet bossy ladycat that I am always happy to visit with. She just needs to stay the heck away from my traps on TNR days!

So...I repeat, what a week! I am not sure when the next trapping night will be. It has to be relatively soon if we want to really stabilize the colony population, but given the mess that was last night I am proposing waiting a week or two before trying again. Between Toby's meddling, the neighbor's loud motorcycle (which arrived next door at the worst possible moment, when the ferals were just starting to emerge from the shadows), and assorted other Elements of Certain Chaos I wouldn't be surprised if the shyer cats we really need to start targeting will take a few days to re-establish their routine. And the routine (especially as it pertains to feeding) is really important for successful TNR.

All that said, one thing I am happy with that we managed yesterday was getting Blue into the house.


(Blue on the patio, looking apprehensive)

Blue has been fighting an upper respiratory infection for a while now, and while it seemed much better on Clinic Day, it looked much worse yesterday evening.

Like worse with eyes practically crusted shut, nose completely sealed off by matted dried mucus and hair, and breathing through the mouth due to nasal blockage. Matt's mom, awesome lady that she is, said she'd take Blue to the vet if she could get the obviously under-the-weather kitty inside, and this didn't end up being very difficult at all.

So anyway. Blue went to the vet. The diagnosis of "respiratory infection" was no surprise at all -- but we were all REALLY surprised to learn that "she" was really a "he"! You'd think the Humane Society would have mentioned that little detail, as I presume they neutered (as opposed to spayed) him last week, but still. Wow. Clearly, Blue isn't actually Dominique and Michelle's mother after all, despite the fact that he was sure as heck acting like Mom to them.

And as for how the other boy cats were treating him -- I'd thought they were doing the chase-and-grab thing as part of whatever passes for feline courtship, but now I'm guessing they were trying to fight him.

Anyhow, I really do wish sometimes that I could learn the stories of all these cats that show up. Who knows what kind of environment Blue and Dominique and Michelle came out of, and who knows if (or how) they are even actually related?

Blue is definitely a Siamese mix of some sort (he's got snowshoe points), but he could still be the girls' littermate or older brother. Litters of random-bred kittens can easily be comprised of both "pointed" and non-pointed cats, and as I've noted before, littermates can even all have different fathers due to the manner in which feline reproduction works. And Blue isn't that much bigger than the girls.

Or -- and at this point I'm considering this the likelier case -- Blue could just be an unrelated boy cat who for whatever reason "adopted" the girls he showed up with. Despite his being a relatively little guy, something about him just feels older. I'd picked up on that somewhat even when I thought he was the girls' mom, but still hadn't figured on her (his) being more than a year or two old.

Now, though, I wonder about that estimate. True he's sick right now so that might be adding a layer of confounding weariness to his bearing, but still, at this point I wouldn't be shocked to find out he was seven years of age or even older. And if he's younger than that, ye gads, I don't even want to imagine what he's likely been through.

That aside, it's not unheard of for male cats to occasionally choose the nursemaid role, though I guess it's sort of unusual for an un-neutered male to do this.

Either way, he's been a great nanny/protector to Dominique and Michelle and while again there's no way to objectively confirm this, I get the sense that all three of them had it pretty rough wherever they were before this past December. I have definitely seen cats band together in times of great stress and it really looks like that's what happened with this little family.

Brodie, The Sensitive Cat

What do I mean by "sensitive" when using such a term to refer to a cat like Brodie? Well, mainly I mean that Brodie is keenly perceptive, hyper-alert to household goings-on, liable to seem "shy" (due to hiding when strangers come around), and very attached to routines.

(In the photo below, Brodie peers through the rungs of one of the dining chairs he likes to sit on.)



He is drawn to details (as a baby he very quickly noticed the string his dangly toys were suspended from and often found them more interesting than the object at the end) and has an extremely long memory...I've often seen him digging under the sofa cushions for toys lost there weeks previously.

He is also (as I've mentioned before) exceedingly polite and highly sociable with other cats. When Shadow first arrived home (three weeks after Brodie and Cora) it was as if the two brothers had never been separated...it took Cora much longer to adjust to yet another boy in the house. And when Nikki arrived this past January, Brodie was the first to greet her, an act which mainly consisted of him following her at a courteous distance and occasionally attempting to sniff her tail.

(Photo below shows Nikki and Brodie kittyloafing together on the sofa, sharing space across a small but respectful gap)



For such a young cat Brodie definitely seems to exhibit an uncannily high degree of subtlety and restraint. His presence in the household seems to provide a sort of harmonizing influence...I always get the sense that if he were absent (perish the thought) for any length of time, things would quickly descend into inter-cat chaos due to the other three resident felines having somewhat "flashier" personalities. Brodie, in other words, is the cat who sits between two other cats who aren't getting along, and suddenly all is calm.

So, certainly Brodie's sensitivity serves him (and the intercat dynamic at work here) quite well in a variety of circumstances. However, he also has his particular challenges, and one of those has had me doing a fair bit of head-scratching recently. Basically, he's had an upsurge in dinnertime anxiety over the past week or so. His appetite seems fine, and I can't see anything wrong with his teeth or mouth (and in general he's not acting "painy"), but he's become very fixated on the front door of the house.

For the past few days he's been going up to his food dish (I feed all three younger cats at the same time, but in separate dishes spaced a few feet apart in the kitchen), sniffing and perhaps licking once or twice at the contents, but then just standing there over his dish staring at the front door with his ears pricked up in "high alert" mode. And if he so much as hears any noise outside -- a bird rustling in the bushes, or a dog walking by -- he will run off and hide in another room.

Meanwhile, Shadow and Cora will have finished their food, and of course one of them (usually Shadow) will see Brodie's abandoned plate as open for the taking. This means I can't just leave it out for Brodie to come back to in his own time...Shadow would eat all day if I gave him the opportunity.

I've also had no real success trying to feed Brodie in a separate room with the door shut...I tried this thinking it might give him a greater sense of security if he couldn't see the front door, but all that did was confuse him because he's used to eating in the kitchen (plus he seemed alarmed at having been taken alone into another room in the first place).

Matt (the SO) thinks I'm worrying too much about this and that Brodie will eat when he's hungry enough. This could very well be true but at the same time Brodie is a large cat and I know that puts him at higher risk of hepatic lipidosis if he goes more than 24 hours without eating, or a week (give or take a few days) eating much less than he should for his size.

All that said, I actually do have a theory as to why the sudden obsession with the front door: Halloween. I tried to feed all the kitties before any trick-or-treaters showed up, and Cora and Shadow ate...but Brodie seemed to be able to tell something was "up", and refused. I had just put some decorations on the front windows and I think those made him nervous just because they looked different than what he was used to. Then we had a lot of trick-or-treaters, which meant people were coming repeatedly to the front door, ringing the bell, talking loudly, etc.

I left several closets open so Brodie could cave up in them if he wanted to, but I can imagine all that activity at the front of the house must have been like his worst nightmare. :/ And it makes sense that he'd still be worried it might happen again a week later. Hopefully this "thing" resolves soon, at any rate...in the meantime I will just make sure and offer him several kinds of food (in different rooms, so maybe he'll get used to eating places other than the kitchen) so that he's likely to eat enough each day.

The Sit-With Invitation: A Second Video

Below is Part 2 in my ongoing Respecting Your Feline Housemates video series:



I called this video "The Sit-With Invitation" because it is about the situation when one might want to invite a cat to sit with them. (A future video will concern the "Participation Invitation", which is when you-the-human invites a cat to come share in some activity or play a game or whatnot.)

Of course there ought never be any obligation for the cat to sit with you, but cats are generally very polite creatures, and hence may just appreciate some signal from you that you're available at a given moment.

Anyway, Part 2 features Brodie and Nikki (it just randomly worked out that way, but seeing as Part 1 featured Coraline and Shadow, I figure this is a nice balanced way to start out the series).

Brodie and Nikki, as you'll see if you watch the video, have very different styles and preferences.

Nikki generally doesn't mind being approached (and will sometimes, though she doesn't do it in this video, yell at me until I walk over to where she wants me!).

Brodie, on the other hand, very much prefers to be the one doing the approaching. He very much likes sitting with me but he's got a very strong "flight" reaction and will usually run away if someone walks up to him too quickly, stares, points at him, etc.

This isn't due to anything being "wrong" with him -- it's just his temperament. Frankly, part of the reason I wanted to make sure and include a video of him responding to an invitation in this series is because I know how often cats like Brodie get written off as "unfriendly" or "standoffish", when really they're just extremely sensitive to movement, etc.

Oh, and another thing I wanted to mention in the video but forgot to is the concept of "social timing" when interacting with cats. You will notice that I do a fair bit of waiting in these videos. This is in deference to something I've noticed about cats, which is that very often they don't react immediately-in-human-terms to something, but rather seem to "process" for a while before taking action.

And...I've found that it's often beneficial to (as the human half of any human-feline interactive exchange) know how to wait out the cat's "processing interval". I've seen a lot of humans, when a cat doesn't respond immediately, start doing all kinds of other things to try and get a response out of the cat. Of course particular cats vary in how they're inclined to react to this, but a lot of them seem to (again, in my observations) just get annoyed and leave, or appear to ignore the human.

And...as odd as this may sound, I am beginning to suspect this may have something to do with differences between the typical human's sense of time and the typical feline's sense of time.

Again, I can't claim to literally see inside their heads, but much of what I've seen them do in various situations suggests to me that cats don't readily distinguish between something that happened a split second ago and something that happened up to, say, five minutes ago.

In other words, it looks to me like felines have a relatively large "now" compared to the typical human's sense of "now". To them, perhaps, it just looks like we're being weird and irrational when we start waving our arms and making googly-eyes at them when they were just about to respond to our first invitationary gesture...which can compel them to figure that maybe they don't actually know WHAT the heck we want, and hence, perhaps we're better off left alone.

I can relate to this in some respects myself, as my own sense of time probably isn't human-typical, but even so I've definitely come to realize lately that cat-human interactions benefit tremendously when the human is willing to wait and sit still and not demand an immediate-in-human-terms response.

An Intriguing Bit Of Feline Communication

Today I let Nikki out of the spare bedroom (where she'd been convalescing since her vet visit this past Sunday). She is mostly back to having the run of the house (but NOT the outdoors!) with the other cats now. So far everything seems to be going very well on that front...Shadow has continued to hiss at her if she gets close, but there's been no actual fighting, which is of course quite a relief.

To give some background for the video and commentary to follow in this post, Brodie is very shy around most humans (other than me and Matt) but he's a regular social butterfly when it comes to other cats. If you're feline, Brodie wants to be your friend. And he's been trying to make friends with Nikki pretty much since she got here in January.

Nikki, however (being eight years older and not all that keen on other cats even when she politely tolerates them) has not really seemed interested in reciprocating. This doesn't bother me -- I don't see why it should, so long as everyone is at least civil to everyone else. Really I'm just happy to be able to have four cats in the same household who aren't hell-bent on tearing each other to shreds. But it's still just incredibly interesting watching all the intercat negotiations that occur inevitably in a multi-feline environment.

Anyway, I was folding laundry this afternoon and Nikki and Brodie were resting on the bed throughout most of this process. Nikki spent a while getting really frustrated at not being able to groom herself properly due to the cone, and Brodie watched this entire affair with considerable interest. Then, (as the first video shows) at some point Brodie started rolling over on his back, blinking at Nikki, and doing ridiculously cute things with his paws! And while Nikki didn't crawl over for a snuggle or anything, she didn't get angry either.



And then, about 15 minutes later, I filmed this:



Basically the second video shows what I believe to be Nikki's response to Brodie's earlier friendly overtures. They still don't end up cozying together in a purr-pile or anything, and at one point they sort of seem to startle one another a bit...but I was quite thoroughly amazed to see Nikki acting this way toward another cat. (And no, she isn't on pain meds anymore, so this couldn't have been due to chemically-lowered inhibitions). Again I leave it entirely up to the cats that live here whether they want to be friends or just coexist or whatnot, but this is still really cool. It would be nice for Nikki, I think, if she knew she had a feline "ally" in the household.

Also...in both these videos, it's worth paying close attention to the kitties' tails. You can sort of pick up on varying levels of curiosity, apprehension, etc., just from watching the little flicky movements they make at different times.

Finally, no, the videos aren't captioned, but I'm not really saying anything of interest in the narrations anyway. (I almost uploaded them with the sound off entirely because really it's the cats' actions that are the most interesting part, but there's this one bit where Brodie makes a seriously adorable mew that I am hoping is audible.)

Colony Cousin Cats

My partner Matt's parents live fairly close to us (in the same town, a few miles over). Matt and I often go over to feed and check up on their cats whenever the parents are out of town -- and they do likewise for us (for which we are of course very grateful).

It is always very interesting to watch the feline social dynamics in and around Matt's parents' house and yard. Between two and five socialized (tame) cats living there might be considered officially resident at any given time, but the house is also located right at the epicenter of a mid-sized feral colony. In other words, when you see a cat eating out of the food bowl on the patio, he or she might well be a feral cat OR a semi-feral cat OR a fully "domestic" cat.

By sheer numbers, most of the cats that cruise by at mealtime are feral. Some of them only come out at night and slink quickly away into the shadows when done eating, so I don't know those very well. Others come out pretty much whenever (as long as there's food) but scamper off if a human comes within ten feet of them.

Still others are probably more toward the "semi-feral" end of the human-socialization spectrum -- they generally don't permit touching, but they'll happily play with wand toys and a few will even take treats right out of my hands. And of course there's the odd stray cat here and there -- for some reason these tend to usually be male, and I can always tell they're stray rather than feral because they initially look very scruffy and unkempt, in addition to being more likely to meow at or approach humans.

But I digress. The real reason for this entry is because I wanted to post some pictures I took yesterday when Matt and I went over his parents' to check on the kitties there.

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This lovely long-haired girl is Toby. She's one of the tame residents -- in the photo above she is rolling over happily on her back to greet me and Matt. She was born right behind Matt's parents' garage and was actually the first feral kitten I ever actually managed to catch. She was only about four weeks old at the time, weighed less than a pound, and had a serious upper respiratory infection (as in, she was literally sneezing blood).

I would have adopted her myself but at the time (almost three years ago) I still lived in a tiny "no pets" apartment. So, she moved in with Matt's parents and was treated for her infection, spayed, vaccinated, etc. She definitely knows who I am, though, seeing as whenever I go over there she pesters me for things she is NOT allowed to have (like water straight from the water cooler tap). As Matt puts it, I must have a sign on my head that only cats can read which says "SUCKER".

But anyway, Toby is a cool cat with what would definitely be described as a "strong personality". She's super affectionate, bossy, territorial, and assertive. I am always happy to see her.

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This neat little ladycat is Harmony. Unlike the other local felines, she did not originate in the feral colony, but instead found her way to Matt's parents' via another relative (who developed health problems last year and could no longer care for Harmony). That relative, in turn, had adopted her from a shelter, and had specifically gotten a black cat due to learning that black cats tended to be either not adopted out of superstitious fear, or (more commonly) simply overlooked and considered "too ordinary".

And...having gotten to know Harmony a bit over the past few months, I can say that she was certainly well named. She gets along with everyone, regardless of species. She's also very much a Greeter Cat...whenever Matt and I go over his parents', Harmony is always the first cat we see, running up to us in the driveway chirping happily with her tail straight up in the air.

Initially when I met her I was actually kind of worried about her because she was so laid-back...I hoped it was just her innate temperament and that she hadn't been scared into submission or something. But at this point I am pretty sure it IS just the way she is. She does actually have self-respect, and while she's less nervous around children (Matt's niece and nephew, for instance, who are nine and seven years old) than a lot of other cats I've seen, she won't put up with any nonsense, either.

(Also, referring back to my post on cats looking different even when they're the same color or coat pattern...Harmony is a great example of a black cat who looks completely different from, say, my black kitty Shadow. Like their whole facial structure is different, their ears are differently shaped, etc.)

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Buttercup! One of a litter of kittens born to feral-mama Rosie, Buttercup is now nearly seven months old. Here she is kittyloafing in the warm fall sunshine. And to me she does actually look a bit like Coraline here...who knows, maybe she and Cora had the same father despite different mothers? They've both got the huge eyes and the fluffy cheeks (and also the cleverness, along with that Knowing Look).

Anyway...Buttercup is a super excellent mega energetic firecracker kitty. When not at rest she seems to move in an entirely different timescale than even most other cats. She kind of seems to teleport when she jumps!

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Buttercup's littermates Buddy (brother, foreground) and Olive (sister, background) enjoying a lazy afternoon. Buddy is a sweet little guy who will very likely grow up to be a very BIG guy. His paws are huge! He reminds me a little bit of Brodie, actually...again I wonder about paternal parentage. Their heads are sort of similarly shaped -- long, yet solid. He's cuddly and teddybearish but with that mile-wide mischievous streak...Matt's mom calls him a "little devil" given his propensity to seek out and conquer houseplants no matter what shelf they might be located on. He very much resembles his uncle Gryff in pattern...very cool marble tabby, which is actually unusual in this colony.

And Olive! If Buttercup is kinetic energy, Olive is potential energy. I need to get a video of the two of them playing, because it's neat seeing Buttercup sproinging around like popping popcorn while Olive sort of waits for just the right moment and then LEAPS. She seems to be the more pensive and cautious of the siblings in this litter and is a little on the shy side. She is also a black cat that looks nothing like any of the other black cats in the vicinity...she's got this elfin look to her and I suspect she'll be longish but not large when she grows up.

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...and THIS little black kitten, gender unknown, as-yet-unnamed, is one of the newest feral litter we've seen wandering around. S/he and siblings look to be about five or six weeks old. Personalities are difficult to gauge at this point, but I was definitely surprised at how close this kitten let me get yesterday.

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Here is the new black kitten again, eating at the food bowl alongside Rosie (Buttercup, Buddy, and Olive's mom, Toby's younger sister, Serena's daughter, and probable second-cousin-or-thereabouts to my guys). It's so cool how these two are just eating together, being perfectly civil. Rosie is spayed now but she could conceivably be helping baby-sit -- female cats in feral colonies will often team up to raise kittens, and there's certainly more to that than just nursing them.

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Here is the mother of the newest litter (the one including the little black kitten in the previous pictures, the little grey tuxedo kitten in this picture, and two others supposedly which I've not yet seen). Yes, there are a lot of black cats in this neighborhood! This mama does not have a name yet but I've seen her around enough times I think she needs one. I am impressed at her tenacity given that she keeps coming back to the yard even though Toby always chases her away when she sees her! (Toby seems to be a little worn out on kittens lately).

I am fairly sure this mamakitty is a daughter or granddaughter of Coal (who, again, is the founding matriarch of the Neighborhood Feral Black Cat Dynasty). She's quite a bit less skittish than Coal, though -- Coal is a "feral's feral", and unless she is actively nursing or bringing babies to eat, she's rarely even seen at all by humans these days. This one of her descendants, though, shows up pretty much whenever, and is surprisingly stubborn about doing so seeing as Toby invariably runs her off the property if she sees her!

Anyway...in this mom-cat's face I can see a slight resemblance to Shadow, and to Coal, due to the slightly squarish jaw thing. But her eyes are sort of differently spaced, and while she IS quite on-edge here she also has a tendency to always look "worried" because of how her forehead is shaped.

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...and finally we have a closer-up shot of tiny grey tuxedo kitty! We don't actually see too many tuxedo kitties around here...the last one I recall seeing was actually Coal's brother (Spooky, who actually decided to give up on the whole feral thing when he was about a year old, and has lived 100% indoors with a neighbor ever since!). I think this new kitten here is a male but I am not certain...either way, whenever I see kittens turn up like this I wish I could do more for them.

Matt's parents have done a GREAT job so far, since they started noticing cats coming into the yard, of taking the ones they or I have caught in for neutering and shots. Much of the colony remains at large, of course, but nine cats (Cora, Brodie, Shadow, Toby, Rosie, Buttercup, Buddy, Olive, Suzie) isn't a bad start. I would love it if we could somehow get a more systematic and effective TNR project going in that neighborhood, though, to help cats like Coal whose bodies are being worn out by litter after litter.

Honestly if I could have one wish on the TNR front it would be for some kind of "taxi service", where basically someone would come with an appropriate vehicle and help you transport the cats to a facility for neutering and vaccinations if you actually managed to catch any. It would also be GREAT if there were low-cost "drop-in" TNR clinics, because right now you basically have to make an appointment, hope you trap a cat, and then IF you trap a cat, go in and get him or her seen to. Which gets all kinds of logistically complicated, and I have massive logistical fail issues.

In the meantime, though, I guess I will stick to just doing whatever is in my means to do, as a little bit of progress is certainly better than none.

Resemblence / Divergence

Prosopagnosia is a perceptual phenomenon in which a human tends to have difficulty recognizing other human faces. This definitely falls into the category of things that I was kind of amazed to learn about (as in, "you mean there's a WORD for that?!") as well as things that I thought "everyone" experienced until I learned otherwise.

In my case I am capable of learning to recognize my fellow apes once I'm very familiar with them, but when someone I see only casually or infrequently gets a haircut or something, I'm liable to not know who the heck they are unless they happen to tell me.

I also used to run into amusing situations when I worked at my last job, as there were some people I only EVER saw in the lab or manufacturing areas. Everyone in those areas was required to wear blue lab coats, and for some reason my brain ended up integrating "blue lab coat" into whatever algorithm it used to recognize those folks. Hence, if one of them randomly walked up to me in the grocery store, initially I would find myself going "gah, who IS this person?" and then finally having to just come out and ask them who the heck they were.

Oh yeah. And when I first saw "Star Wars" as a kid I knew I really LIKED it, but I could not for the life of me tell those two white guys (Han Solo and Luke Skywalker) apart...not until I figured out that their SHIRTS were generally a different color. Seriously. I also spent several years of my childhood under the impression that removing/replacing my glasses was an awesomely effective disguise, seeing as I CLEARLY looked like a completely different person based on whether I was wearing glasses or not.

But! Regardless of whatever issues I might have with HUMAN faces, apparently this doesn't carry over to feline faces. Because every cat I've ever seen looks different from every other cat I've seen, and this is almost always immediately obvious to me. (Any neuroscientists reading this want to take a crack at explaining this one, I'd be very curious to get your thoughts!)

Case in point: two of the three ex-feral littermates sharing my home happen to be blue mackerel tabbies. And I've noticed that a lot of humans persist in classifying cats based almost solely on their coat pattern/color. Several people have, upon seeing Coraline and Brodie, asked me "...but how do you tell them apart? They look like twins!"

Um...no they don't. Not to me at least. They're siblings (brother and sister) so there are certainly aspects they share in common. But they do NOT look anywhere near identical.

Heck, they're not even the exact same color (despite falling generally into the "blue tabby" designation). Brodie is a lighter/softer grey, whereas Cora is "higher contrast" and has some areas of lighter fur that range almost toward a brown-tan color. You can sort of see this in the picture below (in which the tabby siblings survey the new shelves I just put up in the spare bedroom recently):



These two kitties are also quite different in size, though admittedly that's a lot easier to perceive in person than it is in photographs. Cora is a little compact kitty with a "roundness" to her (which isn't anything to do with weight...she's only 7 lbs). She also has this rather unusual fur that isn't quite long enough to be "medium" but which is extremely fluffy and kind of sticks out rather than flopping over (if that makes any sense). Brodie, meanwhile, presently weighs 14 lbs and is much longer-bodied than Cora.



This picture (above, in black and white), with Brodie on the left and Cora on the right, shows some pretty dramatic differences in how their faces are shaped. First off, there's the ears: Brodie's are more triangular, whereas Cora's are more oval-shaped at the tips. Cora also has kind of a heart-shaped face, while Brodie has a pointier chin and overall a more triangular face (with a squarish jaw...he's got some Maine Coon in there somewhere I think, despite his very short, fine hair).



...and here we have a really clear view of their differing profiles. (And it's just the camera angle making Brodie, on the left, appear smaller than Cora, on the right...again, he's a lot bigger than she is IRL). Brodie has a rather long head and muzzle, almost to Oriental/Siamese proportions, whereas Cora has a shorter muzzle and a little vaguely up-turned nose. Again, very different-looking IMO.



Of course their personalities are also quite different -- you'd NEVER mistake them for the same cat if you actually knew them. But even on the level of "mere" appearance, to me there's just no question they're not identical by any stretch of the imagination. They're both beautiful, certainly, but not in the exact same ways!