How to catch aggrissive feral cat?

[beowulf]

@Ziva.Sparks

They have a barn cat release program, but they just must get some really nasty cats in.

Trying not to rag on you, but I would caution you against using terms like “nasty” to describe a living, feeling thing that just does not know better. They are not nasty. They are scared beings that feel their survivability is being threatened, and they are just trying to survive the best way they know how.

I really like the Bathroom Method for reforming feral cats. I have a 100% success rate with it, but it requires time. You lock them in a small room (such as a bathroom) with food/water/bedding. Don’t free feed them; you bring the food in and place it adjacent to you where you sit quietly. Ideally, you sit with them until they eat - which may take a while. Leave after they eat, and rinse/repeat. After a few days of this, start staying in the room with them after they finish eating. I like to read a book. Talk to them so they become acclimated to your voice, but don’t stare at them. You can move the bowl closer to you each day, with the eventual goal of them eating next to you. Plan on a half an hour each day. Once they look just watchful and not scared, try to play with them. Most ferals respond well to feathers on a string. Your goal is to get them out of whatever they are hiding behind (usually the toilet). Even a smack at a toy is a win. Do this for a month and you just may have a lap cat.

Cats - especially ferals - can be “bad patients” to handle in a stressful environment, but that doesn’t make them nasty. So much of what we ask of them in a clinical setting is incredibly unfriendly to cat species.

[trubandloki]

@beowulf

I really like the Bathroom Method for reforming feral cats. I have a 100% success rate with it, but it requires time. You lock them in a small room (such as a bathroom) with food/water/bedding. Don’t free feed them; you bring the food in and place it adjacent to you where you sit quietly. Ideally, you sit with them until they eat - which may take a while. Leave after they eat, and rinse/repeat. After a few days of this, start staying in the room with them after they finish eating. I like to read a book. Talk to them so they become acclimated to your voice, but don’t stare at them. You can move the bowl closer to you each day, with the eventual goal of them eating next to you. Plan on a half an hour each day. Once they look just watchful and not scared, try to play with them. Most ferals respond well to feathers on a string. Your goal is to get them out of whatever they are hiding behind (usually the toilet). Even a smack at a toy is a win. Do this for a month and you just may have a lap cat.

I do something similar with my TNR cats, but outside.

They come home from their appointment, still very drugged. They get rolled into a dog crate set up with a good hiding place, food bowl, water, litter box and a soft comfy bed.

While they are in that cage in my barn I spend my barn time talking. Literally telling the cat a play by play of what I am doing. Then I give them some high value wet food and hang out a safe place (when we start that is not even close to the cage).
It typically takes them not very long to learn that I bring yummy stuff, they like yummy stuff.
I position the litter pan and the food as easily accessible to the door of the cage as I can, so I can do daily cleaning. They should not have to be dirty while they are trapped.

I have only had one ever come out of this set-up not being friendly. Some very friendly. Some petting allowed but picking up not allowed friendly. The one I call not friendly would weave around my legs and talk to me, but she did not want to be touched. That was fine, I get it.

I feel like the friends of Ziva.Sparks are either doing weird things with feral cats or making up fancy stories.

Edit to add - all programs I know do as described above. Feral cats must come in inside a trap. They are sedated in the trap. They are put back into the trap still sedated. No chance for the staff to get attacked or injured. Even my regular vet (that does not have a TNR program) does it this way.

[beowulf]

My first time doing TNR, I misunderstood the assignment and brought in a fistful of cats crammed between two carriers (a momma and her four kittens). It’d taken a week after trapping to get the appointment. I missed the memo they are supposed to go back into the trap and/or stay there. You should have seen the look of horror on the vet’s face.

Actually, at first the vet was pretty rude about it. I guess a lot of people try to take advantage of the program by bringing in their house cats. Once she realized I was the one that had called ahead about the whole fiasco she softened some.

Every clinic is different but the one I go to is all about efficiency and economy. You walk into a building through double doors and it opens up into a repurposed gymnasium, which has about sixty ~16 foot long stainless steel work tables in about ten rows. Each ‘row’ is an entire assembly line from sedation and vaccination (TNR here does Rabies and FCRVP), to prep, to surgery/incision, to after-care. They will bang out something like 100 spays in an afternoon. It’s incredible to watch, but it’s not for the faint hearted and there is a lot of noise and stress for the cats.

Thankfully it’s done relatively quickly, and the cats are better off for it.

[janu0302]

you can catch with love only

[endlessclimb]

This is how I did it when I took on 9 or so ferals at once. A whole line up of crates. One kitty, Skittles, was really jumpy and flipped his litterbox, food, and water twice before I got the memo and ziptied them to the side of the cage. He would do it at night, not sure what was freaking him out in the dark but he was zooming around pretty good to flip all that stuff lol.

As long as you’re not acting crazy, they all just went to the back of the crate while I did my work. Some, by the end of the 2ish weeks, would come start eating while I was still there, or would even start eating as I set it down. Others weren’t so keen. Each one was different.