National Feral Cat Day

We interrupt the awesome 5 year anniversary updates for National Feral Cat Day!

National Feral Cat Day® Facts
- Alley Cat Allies launched National Feral Cat Day® on our 10th anniversary in 2001 to raise awareness about feral cats, promote Trap-Neuter-Return, and recognize the millions of compassionate Americans who care for them.
- National Feral Cat Day® is observed on October 16 every year.
- The theme for this year’s National Feral Cat Day® is “TNR: From the Alley…to Main Street.”
- More and more people celebrate National Feral Cat Day® each year. Since 2011, more than 1,000 National Feral Cat Day events have taken place—spreading the word and helping feral cats all over the country—and even outside of the U.S. with international events! We can’t wait for you to reach even more people with National Feral Cat Day® this year!

Feral Cat Facts
- Feral cats have lived alongside humans for more than 10,000 years. They are the same species as pet cats. Feral cats, also called community or outdoor cats, live in groups called colonies and can thrive in every landscape. They are just as healthy as pet cats, but they are not socialized to humans and are therefore unadoptable.
- Trap-Neuter-Return—a humane approach to managing and caring for feral cats—is the only effective method of stabilizing feral cat colonies. In the last decade, the number of local governments with official policies endorsing TNR for feral cats has increased tenfold, with hundreds of cities and towns successfully carrying out TNR.
- However, in the majority of cities, feral cats are still caught and brought to animal pounds and shelters where they are killed. The shelter system is the number one cause of death for cats in the United States. About 70% of cats who enter shelters are killed there, including virtually 100% of feral cats. That’s why it’s so important for people like you to use National Feral Cat Day®, and every day, to help build more compassionate communities for cats.

To all the kitties living the feral life, we wish you food, shelter, a caretaker & most importantly - sterilization

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National Feral Cat Day Event

As stated last year, there's another type of "special needs" pet that can't exactly be adopted, but still needs love & care (and sterilization!) just like any other pet of ours - feral cats.

3 weeks from now is National Feral Cat Day and Joa's Arc is taking part in a fun event: dine to donate - that's right, eat and donate to our good cause.

On Wednesday, October 16th, the Apple Bee's in Audubon, NJ, will be donating 10% of the receipts paid for with a flyer handed in with it. We will be splitting the funds with another great group, Pet Savers, who will be using the funds just like us - to make a difference for local feral cats through sterilization and education of their communities.

Head on over to this website to print out the flyer necessary to "Dine2Donate": flyer available here.

We'll see you there! :)

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Caring for Another Type of Special Needs Animal – Community Cats

It's not just domestic pets that need assistance. Community cats can get sick too and today, Joa’s Arc's friend, Debbie R, was nice enough to put together a list of ways to help Community Cats too

Whether you are caring for a colony or notice a cat needs additional veterinary care at the time of spaying or neutering, we have a responsibility to provide the best care we can for each individual animal. But providing daily or routine care of cats that can’t be handled presents a very special challenge.

Here are some of the ways you can handle some of the more common issues:

Fleas: If you notice your cats scratching and you suspect fleas, a Capstar pill crushed up into their wet food will kill fleas within 3-6 hours. Capstar is safe and effective and doesn’t require a prescription.

Ear Mites: Revolution (prescription & purchased through a vet) effectively treats ear mites but must be applied topically. It could be done while the cat is under anesthesia or when in a trap. Revolution also treats fleas and intestinal parasites, but does need to be applied monthly if the problem continues.

Intestinal Parasites: For roundworms and hookworms, in addition to be being able to use Revolution to treat for these parasites, you can safely put Strongid into the wet food to treat the cat.

Ringworm: “It takes 21 days for ringworm to heal if you treat it and 3 weeks if you don’t.” Some strains of ringworm respond to a double dose of Program flea treatment. Good nutrition also helps the cat’s own immune system to respond.

Viral Infections: Treating eye infections is difficult, but can’t be neglected. Loss of vision is common if left untreated. Antibiotics have no direct effect on viral infections such as URI (upper respiratory infection) or Herpes virus eye infections. However, azithromycin has been found to be effective in resolving herpes eye infections. Often vets will prescribe antibiotics to prevent a secondary bacterial infection for an URI. In addition to crushing pills or adding liquid to wet food, prescriptions can be compounded with cat-pleasing flavorings. If you have the cat contained in a trap to care for it, you can put the trap under a heavy bath towel with a humidifier to aid in moistening the mucus membranes and ease breathing.

Bacterial Infections: Giving antibiotics to feral cats or kittens twice a day is difficult. However, there is a one-time injection of Convenia that provides 7-14 days of antibiotic treatment. It can be given at the time of spaying or neutering if an infected wound is discovered or teeth need to be pulled. Also, if an infection is noticed in one of the colony cats, the cat could be re-trapped and given an injection while in the trap.

For many other procedures, such as examining an injury or cutting out large clumps of matted hair, you will need to sedate the cat.

We hope you find this information helpful in caring for community cats.
A great, big thank you to Deb for putting this together.

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More Than What It Seems

Lots of comments have been made about how the cats looked healthy, how they looked cared for, that they were lovable, etc.

There were a handful or so of friendly, mostly healthy cats. That's true. Actually, there are often pets like this in just about any hoarder's house. Hoarders don't usually start with dozens and dozens of pets - there is often a small, "original group" which at one point got their own individual, they were loved, socialized and cared for... at one point.

Like in most hoarding situations though, underneath the healthy looking pets were ones who were anything but well or even properly cared for. In this house, aside from the friendly, healthy cats, there were:

- cats with eye injuries
- cats withpainful genetic eye deformities
- several cats with chronic URIs (imagine a raw, runny nose or crusty eyes all the time)
- females constantly lactating because kittens that weren't even theirs were nursing on them
- 2 rooms of "families" of cats closed in there all the time interbreeding with each other with barely a fan to circulated the hot summer air
- cats with injuries going untreated
- bugs by or in the food
- unfixed tomcats marking (peeing on) everything
- a kitten born paraplegic just wriggling in all the filth

Could the cats have been sicker? Yes.

Could they have been starving? Yup.

But this house absolutely was not simply a herd of cats that we felt was 'too many'.

This house also completely drained our rescue. Although many people kindly donated to help out, things like the flea covered, sick kittens we removed at the end of October and Alexa's requiring her eye to be removed, cleaned up out. We have no money for the special needs animals still in our care. Please consider donating so we can keep up the work we do:

You can also send a donation to our PO Box

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An Update

After several weeks of eye meds with no improvement, it was determined that one of the hoarder house cats had entropian (the eye lids turn in and eye lashes constantly irritate the eye ball).

This is a condition that must be corrected with surgery and it is a congenital condition, meaning this poor guy has been suffering his entire life, but among all the other cats in the house, his condition was either never noticed or just neglected. Poor man!

He got surgery to correct this condition and is on eye meds for an severely uclerated eye ball.

His caretaker Deb reports: Definition of a challenge = putting eye drops in a ferals eye!

Hahahaha! We wish you the best of luck, Deb! If only there was a way we could explain to them that we're trying to help... Tweet This

Adopt A Less Adoptable: Shirl Girl

This adorable kitty cat is Shirley, AKA Shirl-Girl.

Shirley along with her sister, Laverne, were saved from the outside as kittens when they were humane trapped. Since they were so young, the two kittens were taken to a more than qualified foster mom, Joa's Arc's Jen S, so that they could be socialized. They didn't know how to trust people, let alone live in a home or ask for the affection they so very much deserved.

At first, the two kittens were kept in a large crate with all they would need: comfy blankets to sleep on, a litterbox, fresh food & water and a toy or two. Confining unsocialized kittens like this ensures they are safe (not trying to hide under the sofa, behind the washing machine, in the ceiling or holes around the house - you'd be amazed what they can squeeze themselves into) and keeps them in a small space where they are forced to interact with you, even if that just means watching you fill their food dish at first. Jen S also made sure their crate was set up in the middle of her home, so the kittens would be exposed to every day life. Confining the kittens like this makes socializing them go much faster!

Shirley was the first of the two kittens to really come around and trust her foster family. For that, she was released into the home - allowing her to interact with the other pets and people. 

I can't see them...
They can't see me. Right??

Shirley, although she has been available for adoption since she was a kitten, is now a young cat still in foster car. You see, not only is Shirl a black cat (a color of cat sadly avoided due to silly superstitions), but she's also a little shy (see second photo). Even after being socialized really well, new things sometime startle Shirley and she'll go into hiding. Her young life living outside and having to hide to stay alive isn't something she's forgotten.

Those things aside, Shirley is one super special girl that would make an excellent pet if someone gave her a shot and some time to adjust. Shirley really enjoys other cats (Scooter was one of Shirley's best buds before he passed away) and her foster home has dogs of various sizes in it, so she's used to being with dogs too. In her home, she likes to play, snuggle on the sofa and run around with the other cats, including her sister who still is still a little behind Shirley in the social department. Tweet This

Spotlight On Weenie

The fall makes us think of lots of things - pumpkins, changing leaves, warm apple cider ... and Halloween. Meet Joa’s Arc Halloween (aka "Weenie")! Weenie is a beautiful calico girl in need of a new home due to her owners moving away and not thinking to take her. Maybe it was for the best though. Weenie had been living as an outside cat, but she is very affectionate cat who deserves a loving, safe inside home.

In updating Weenie with her vaccinations, Weenie's first foster mom found out that Weenie is FIV+. Weenie could live in a home with other FIV+ cats or, honestly, in just about any home! FIV is not as scary as it sounds.

Though you should do some research for yourself, here are some basic facts:

• - The "F" in FIV stands for "feline," so humans and dogs can't catch it.
  
• - The only way FIV is passed through spayed/neutered cats is from deep, deep bite wounds during fighting, which can be avoided with proper introductions like when any new cat comes into a home.
  
• - the viral strains of FIV used in laboratories were very virulent, and much previously published information is based on this. However, FIV strains in cats living normal lives tend to be much more benign and may never cause disease. *keep this in m ind when doing research*
  
• - T he FIV virus has a long incubation period, so a cat who tests FIV+ may live free of FIV-related disease for a lifetime.

Back to Weenie though – she is a gorgeous cat who gets along with other cats (she lived with two other cats before who were both FIV negative) and she is very affectionate with people too as her foster family can tell you. She is playful, talkative and an all around super cat! Please consider adopting her because she really deserves a super life.

It is "Adopt-A-Less-Adoptable-Pet Week" this week! What a perfect week for the animals of Joa’s Arc.

Check back each day for a new post about some of the great animals that are in our care or have found wonderful new homes thanks to Joa’s Arc. Keep in mind Joa’s Arc is constantly getting requests about animals in need like these special furbabies on our site. Even a dollar will help! Please donate what you can to the animals of Joa’s Arc:

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Introducing Tilly

Meet Tilly! Tilly is for Otilie which is German for "fortunate heroine" and I'm not sure there's a better name for this little girl! Let me start from the beginning though...

An old friend of mine called me Saturday afternoon to tell me that she has been noticing some ferals not far from the high school we went to together. She wanted information on who to contact about getting them fixed. Relating more to Joa’s Arc though, my friend was calling because not too long before calling me, my friend had seen a smaller, dilute calico dragging her back end (born that way? Hit by car?).

I made arrangements with my friend to meet her near by the next morning so she could show me to the place and we could look for the injured cat. We saw cats, lots of them - but not the one we were looking for. I helped my friend leave food for the cats (who looked to be living off the restaurant left overs and "slop" being fed to the pigs there). You can see in the photo that the orange kitty is eating slop and the little brown tabby with white is eating the dry food we put down. I was surprised they let us get as close as they did before running off - some would let us get within just a couple feet!

I returned for a second visit later Sunday evening and saw even fewer cats and still no signs of the cat with the injured back legs...

With the encouragement of all the other Joa’s Arc members and our supporters, I continued to look for this elusive, injured kitty. I went back Monday morning to feed the kitties and there were a few around, but not our girl. I gotta admit, I was a bit scared because no one was there this morning and there were like 75 vultures picking at the trash and eating along with the cats.

I left, but returned about an hour later. I pulled up where I had been parking for each visit and right in my line of view, sitting in the brush, was a dilute girl. Too good to be true, I thought! But as I approached her (these cats let you get pretty close before running), she got up to run and was dragging her back end! I'd like to brag, but she was pretty slow and didn't put up much of a fight. I went back to my car, got a big comforter and followed her little drag marks in the snow. She was just starting to go under the boat behind the abandoned house when I tossed the comforter over her. She hissed a little, but that was about it.

Medically, Tilly is in rough shape. She suffers from some sort of trauma to her back, though what caused it exactly, we may never know. She has sores on her feet from dragging her feet like the one pictured here. She got her vaccinations and when her sores heal, she can be spayed. Her paralysis in her back end makes her different, but she can still lead a wonderful life now that she's safe and warm inside.

Socially, Tilly seems very, very scared. We're hoping she's not feral and can eventually come around since she obviously cannot go back outside in her condition. Cross your fingers she comes around and learns to trust as her wounds heal.

So far, living outside as she was, she proven she's obviously a survivor. Tweet This