Welcome to our Wild Cat Colony

We retired five years ago and moved to a new home, one that is well suited to the lifestyle we enjoy. We are fortunate, also, that our property is lakeside and has lots of trees and vegetation that supports a large variety of wildlife. Our house has lots of large windows, and we are always on the lookout for the wildlife that flourishes here.

In late fall a year ago we spied a very thin gray kitten scratching underneath the bird feeders in front of the house for spilled birdseed. She looked so pathetic, and since we are both catlovers, we knew we had to do something to help her. We borrowed some catfood from our companion, who is a large Maine Coon named Alex, and set it out for her. She waited until we were safely back inside, and then immediately gobbled it all up. From then on, she would wait by our house every morning and we would set food out for her. She seemed to be feral and would not let us near her. Alex would amble up to the window to watch her eat, but did not seem overly bothered. Since it seemed she would be sticking around and neighboring housecats were beginning to notice the food, we moved her feeding place to the porch at the back of our house.

If we were away from home longer than a day, our son who lives in the same town, took over the morning feedings.

It was, of course, becoming noticeably colder each morning, and we worried that the kitten might not be able to survive (our winters get cold, and while we usually don't get more than 5 inches of snow at a time, the ground is often covered with snow. Also, we were aware of the many predators nearby (foxes, cougars, coyotes to name a few). But though we tried and tried, she was very wary and we were unable to capture her. We contacted our local shelter, but they are overwhelmed with the cats that are brought to them and could not enter into a capture program in our back yard. The kitten was very resourceful, and found a suitable home (probably underneath one of our decks) and weathered the cold and snow. We have no doubt she was able to scare off any other predator taking an interest in her - she has a wicked hiss.

One morning in May she brought three kittens when she came to eat. We were surprised and enchanted. Alex, who still watched when she came to eat, did a double take. We wish we had caught that on film. Thee new kittens all had tortoise shell coloring. Two were long hairs and one had short hair like it's mama. We named them Scarface (the largest which we think is a male), Harley (short for Harlequin, due to her markings, and Yellow Ears (although her coloring is mostly dark, the backs of her ears are bright yellow. Our gray cat now had a name, too: Mama. We immediately went shopping for kitten chow. At that time we began to notice a large yellow longhair with a proprietary air. Apparently this was the daddy. He seemed perfectly content to relax in the backyard and watch his family at play. But we realized that it was time to do some family planning.

We contacted our vet and borrowed a capture cage. We caught Harley and had her spayed. However, after that none of the cats would go near the capture cage. I usually spent time sitting on the porch in the morning after I fed the cats. The time Harley spent at the vet apparently made her friendlier to people, and she would let me pet her. Not so with the rest of them. Yellow Ears, who is the most standoffish of all of them, let me pet her one morning; and I took advantage and grabbed her behind the neck. My hold wasn't as secure as I thought as she immediately turned over and when her claws sunk in, I let go. We bought a fishing net, and I thought that I would grab it while I sat out with the breakfasting cats and bring it down over one of them. Never worked. The minute I reached for the pole, they made themselves scarce.

We are out in our backyard much of the time during warm weather as I have planted several flower beds which require constant maintenance. Erv spends quite a few mornings making sure everything stays watered. Even so, when we are outside the cats are nowhere to be seen.

During the course of the summer the yellow male disappeared and a sleek showed up from time to time. In September Erv noticed there were two new kittens in one of our window wells. They would disappear for a couple days and then reappear in the window wells. Mama moved them once a day. She brought them to the porch for breakfast in late October. Both are gray. One is the same color as Mama. The other is darker, and we're thinking of naming her Pepper. We are now back in capture and spay mode. We picked up the capture cage on Friday and are hoping that the cats have short memories.

Last month Erv built housing out of insulation sheets; and as winter begins our cats are wintering in a duplex cat condo – heated, no less. We learned that what we have is a cat colony. These wild cats have inspired so much fun for us during the past year that we want to share the joy.

You’ll also be hearing about our Maine Coon Alex. He was our only cat until last year, and his antics while he overlooks the colony from inside our house are part of the fun.