One day an emaciated but fluffy tabby cat appeared on our back porch.

Being cat lovers, we immediately put up a shelter for her, named her Olive, and started feeding her, though we noticed that she didn’t put on weight quickly. She purred a lot and let us pet and even hold her, so we suspected she was a tame cat whom someone had abandoned, and who was having a hard time surviving on her own. If I’m not careful, she’ll run into the house.

One warm sunny spring morning it became clear why Olive was always hungry, always eating, and still thin. Looking through my kitchen window, I saw two kittens rolling around in the grass near a lush bed of kale plants. And then I saw two more, and two more, and two more.

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Olive, the Mother of All.

Trapped! Olive is on her way to get spayed.

Olive looks much healthier and fatter now.

As soon as Olive’s kittens were weaned, we trapped Olive and got her spayed.

A month later, we started trapping kittens.

The fattest one, Bubba, was easy to catch, as he loved to eat and happily blundered into the trap, focused entirely on the sardine inside. The vet commented after neutering him that he had a lot of subcutaneous fat. Bubba was followed a few days later by a beautiful white kitten and a long haired gray kitten, whom we named Pearl because her fur matched the color of a black pearl perfectly.

Olive's daughter Pearl, huddling in a flower pot

Olive's daughter, The Cat Woman suns herself on a bench

The Cat Woman stretches out in the garden

One kitten approached us happily, and we dubbed her The Cat Woman because she sported a black mask over her head and ears, as well as a few black spots on her otherwise white flanks. She followed me around the garden as I worked, chattering away, ambushing me from behind a currant bush, and playing with sticks and leaves.

She soon got caught in our trap and lost her reproductive equipment.

The Cat Woman had a brother who was all black, and like her, he became tame and won our hearts. He figured out how to get into the trap and eat the sardine without actually tripping the trap, but only after we got him neutered.

The Cat Woman

The Cat Woman plays with me while I pick strawberries.

There were two kittens who eluded us and refused to enter the trap: a fluffy tuxedo with short stumpy legs, and a large, long haired, majestic tuxedo with a black head and a white mustache. We named them Mamacita (after we found out she was female) and Mustachio. Mustachio would sit next to the trap and grin at us, chuckling at our pitiful attempts to catch her. Unfortunately, it turned out that both Mamacita and Mustachio were female, and they both had kittens before they were a year old.

Mamacita had four kittens: two short-haired tuxedos whom we named Mutt and Jeff in the hopes that they were both male, an anthracite gray kitten who died quite young, and a beefy tuxedo whose face was half black and half white, split right down the middle. We named that last kitten Harlequin. We caught Mutt and Harlequin easily, and sure enough, they were male. Surely Jeff would also turn out to be male, once we caught him…

Mustachio had a larger litter of kittens, including three siamese, a gray kitten, and a fat fluffy tuxedo who soon acquired the appellation of Roly Poly. We caught all of Mustachio’s kittens and spayed or neutered them, but we still couldn’t catch Mustachio or Mamacita, and then, to our surprise, Jeff, Mamacita’s kitten we had hoped was male, had a litter. Jeff had her kittens at the neighbor’s house, and being a very young mother, she abandoned them. The neighbor was able to save and raise one.

Mustachio is handsome, large, and very productive.

Young Harlequin

Mustachio is Queen of all she surveys

Dot

Angela, another former stray. She had a daughter, Mimi.

Mimi. Like mother, like daughter.

Like her mother, Mimi loves belly rubs.

And that brings us to the summer of 2024!

Mamacita had five more kittens – Capon, Spot, Arabella, Patches, and Onyx. We’ve caught all of them except Patches, whom we hope to trap this week. Capon and Spot are affectionate and let me carry them, and Arabella waits on top of a honeysuckle arbor for me to come home. Their mother Mamacita has since disappeared.

Mustachio had another litter, as did Jeff. We managed to give away two of Mustachio’s kittens and one of Jeff’s, but we still have three fluffy black kittens (one of whom is now spayed), two short- haired tabbies with white feet (Boots and Mittens), a long-haired tabby whom we spayed, Groucho, and all five of Mamacita’s kittens (four of them have been spayed as I write). At last count, we have fifteen cats living on the property, with the occasional visit from Harlequin and the Cat Woman.

You may be wondering why I have written down this long list of cats, and the truth is that I wanted you to get to know them a little, and to like them as much as we do, but they are eating us out of house and home.

We go through a large bag of cat food every 4 days (at $40-45 a bag), with the occasional fish skin, sardine, or can of soft food rejected by the indoor cats thrown in. And that doesn’t include the cost of spaying all of them (most of them are female, and spaying costs $250+, while neutering costs from $150-200), worming them, and giving them rabies shots.

A few of Mamacita's kittens huddling together in a basket.

Arabella and Capon in a box.

Getting them spayed reminds me of how expensive it is to take care of animals, and I realize that many people simply can’t afford it; unable to pay to spay a cat, desperate owners drop their pregnant cats off at the edge of town, on properties where they think someone will take kitty in. There are some resources out there, but they are usually booked out for months, and by then one’s young cat may have produced a litter of kittens. Last year there was an explosion in the feral cat population, with shelters getting overwhelmed state-wide. I don’t know if more cats are being abandoned because of the economic hardship that came with the pandemic, or if there is some other reason, but the cats are showing up on people’s doorsteps.

Roly Poly has grown beefy. On the left is his cousin Mutt's leg.

Mamacita relaxes by the barbeque.

Harlequin relaxes in the sun.

Jeff nurses her kittens

Some people say not to feed them, just let them live off the land, because cats are survivors, but if we don’t feed them, those hungry cats will decimate the bird populations, so we keep ours well fed, and while I did once see the Cat Woman kill a garter snake, and I see the cats hunting voles and mice in the field across from our house, I have not found the remains of a single bird.

I’ve found that giving them high-quality healthy food reduces their drive to hunt birds.

I would bring them all inside if I could, as that would stop them from hunting all together, but that’s just too many cats for our little house.

So I am putting out the call!

Would any of you be able to help us out by donating to our feral cat fund?

I’m putting up a “Please Donate” button on the website. Every little bit helps.

If a few people donate 5$ or even 1$ a month, that goes a long way to ease the burden. I feel it’s important to get this feral cat population under control, but it takes money, more money than I have at the moment. If it were to happen that we get plenty of donations and don’t need more, I would turn off the donate button. I’m not trying to make money for my own enjoyment. These cats deserve a good life, one without constant pregnancies and with good food, and I want to make that happen for them. Thank you so much for reading this and considering donating towards their well-being!