Cat Care, Breeds and Resources Blog

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We’ve been fostering a feral mom-to-be cat for about 2 weeks. Actually, she is only about 6 months old herself. So, she’s a kitten having kittens. We named her Poppy because it looked like she was ready to pop.

She was part of a feral colony. She was used to being fed by a volunteer so she was fairly easy to catch in the heart trap. The goal is to at least to get the babies socialized, tested, spayed/neutered, and get them forever homes. I hope we can socialize Poppy too. She’s still fairly young. If she can’t be socialized, we’ll spay her and return her to a feral colony to live out her life. Below are a couple of pictures of her:

Poppy actually looks bigger in these pictures than she looks in person. She has a tiny face and tiny paws. The only thing that was big was her belly.

We have her in a old utility room between our kitchen and garage. Initially there was a window seat in front of the window, a cat bed on a board covering the large utility sink, a cat condo, a table, scratching post, a litter box and water dish.

Days 1 - 3: She hid in the little cat condo and would not come out in our presence.
Days 4 - 6: She came out to get the food we tried to entice her with — hissing until we left, then she’d eat.
Days 7 - 10: She came out and ate with us sitting there. Sometimes hissing but not all the time.
Days 11 - 12 She would actually come to the door when I called my other cats for their afternoon treat of soft food. I would open the door, she’d hiss and run back in and wait for me to give her food.

During this time we discovered that if we had the door open and one of our cats would come to the door, Poppy would come out immediately to greet them — ignoring us. She would talk to them and walk right by us to get to them. She forget she was feral and even rub up against our legs and we could pet her. She’d arched her back and rub then suddenly, she’d look up and hiss and run off.

She had her litter yesterday morning. There are 3, maybe 4 kittens. Poppy hisses now every time we enter the room. And, she’s eating a lot. I leave water and hard kitten food out 24 hours so she gets all the nutrients and protein she needs. Since she loves soft food, I take her some every 3 or 4 hours. She comes out quickly to get it hissing all the way. Even though she will eat it with me there.

I have been taking pictures from the door with a zoom and will begin posting them in the next post so come back and see how Poppy and her kittens are doing.

Purrs, Frankie

Lee here. I like that little Poppy. She’s a little fat, but Mom’s says that’s because she’s going to have kittens. I wonder how that happened? Lee out.

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P.P.S. For funny cat pictures and facts, click Cats Just Wanna Have Fun

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