The Story continues:
Progress is slow here at Kitty Village, but every day we are working to get closer in making this particular Village very nice and safe for Smokey and Bandit’s family to live in.
Smokey is recovering very nicely and has started to show a little tolerance with Betty during her recuperation. I also put together a larger habitat for Mom to live. This seems to help.
With our cat clowder, and especially with Smokey, we had to continue what I call good cat, bad cat personas. Unfortunately, I had to take on the bad cat persona and missed out on the true connection Betty is having with this feral cat clowder. What I mean by this, is that I am the one who traps them when they are ill and need to go to the veterinarian. If they have a spur on their paw, I am the one that has to catch and hold them so Betty can get it out.
In Smokey’s case, I am the one that had to hold her during bandage changes, administering medications, eye drops, ointments, and so on. Because of this, when Smokey sees me she backs into a corner due to being afraid I will grab her again.
Most recently when Smokey sees Betty, she arches her back while stretching and meowing. Betty is able to pet her for the first time while she eats. I even heard Smokey purr when she saw Betty.
This is okay by me, if it means I helped to make them safe and healthy. If this helps to turn their lives around for the better, then I am happy being the bad cat persona.
Our backyard is fairly large being that my property is just over an acre in size. We have prepped the area directly behind my house for the cat enclosure which will give them access to the covered patio, screened porch, and the large wood decking area they love going under. This covers approximately 4,800 square feet of area, giving each cat 800 square feet of space. My entire backyard covers approximately 22,000 square feet from fence line to fence line. Maybe in the future I can expand their area, but for now they will have more living space than I do. If another stray or two shows up, I will not turn them away but, I’d rather educate everyone about feral and abandoned cats and how to control the population of these cats so they all can have a better life.
In the future, I will go into in more depth about feral / stray cats and what you can do to help.
Thank you for reading Kitty Village News.
S&B
i love your work with the kitty’s and the little story’s. Great work and i hope everyone contributes to your effort.