2009 Beginnings

Happy New Year everyone. I hope 2009 will be great for you. 

My blogging activities over the last few weeks have been sporadic I know – I put it down to heavy work deadlines, weariness, the frantic Xmas and Boxing Day cooking schedule, overseas visitors staying with us en masse, and of course the varied activities of my 20+ feline friends. A quick wrap up for the end of 2008 revealed several things in regard to the feral cats living on my farm:

(1) The four newly born kittens I covered in a previous post disappeared. I am presuming they died because I found no trace of them. How this happened, I can only speculate. Either predators or a natural death. It is always sad when animals die, let alone those who haven't had a chance to even live.

(2) I have a young feral cat (he's about seven months old) living in my studio. He comes in at night and goes outside in the morning. His name is Boston. That's his photo. I caught him two months ago. He is the oldest kitten I have socialised and I will devote more blog space to writing up a case study on him (as well as the other kittens I have socialised) so you can get an understanding of the inherent process with slight adjustments and variations according to the age, temperament and position of each kitten in the cat hierarchy.

(3) I have just found four new kittens. This mother cat – Sweetie as she is known – came in under the radar. I didn't even know she was pregnant again. She is also the mother of Boston and must have got pregnant with them around the time that I caught him. These Xmas kittens are gorgeous and I will be chronicling their journey in a series of blog posts. I have not caught them yet so you will be getting step by step description and action as the story unfolds. This also emphasises the need for me to try and catch Sweetie again so I can get her desexed – she is just too street smart at the moment and avoids the cat traps entirely. Let's hope the kittens will not be as hypervigilent or as intelligent as their mother so I can start the process and rehome them ASAP.