Help with a cat

Around midsummer we noticed a cat hanging around our backyard. It seemed to be starving but would not come close when called. I believe it was abandoned, not feral. One day after filling my birdfeeder and throwing some stale cornbread around the feeder, I noticed the cat eating the corn bread. I bought some dry cat food and have been feeding the cat ever since. I cannot get any closer than 5 feet to the cat and he will not eat the food unless I go in and close the sliding glass door. He seems much healthier and acts like he wants to come in but is too scared.

It appears that one of his ears is cropped (squared off). It is too straight to be a birth defect or normal. At New Year's I was at a party (about 20 miles away) and my friends were feeding a neighborhood cat that had the same type of squared off ear. They believe that vets mark the cats by squaring off the ear to show it has been fixed. Vets wouldn't cut a cat's ear for this purpose would they? But what other explanation is there?

http://www.catsnap.org/ferals.htm


more links

http://modblog.bmezine.com/2007/07/29/dermal-punched-ear-on-a-cat/

http://www.sniksnak.com/cathealth/ferals.html
The site below has lots of info on trapping feral cats


http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/12/16/misc_rescuegroups.html



You can google "ear cutting of spayed/neutered cats" and you will get lots more info

He's all white and very clean looking. Feral cats I have seen at usually mangy.

I wonder about the ethics involved in letting the animal go, he was definitely starving when I started feeding him. He has killed at least one bird at my feeder, but seems to be an extremely poor hunter.

Edited to add: Thanks for the info.

Maybe he escaped...or perhaps, sadly, was abandoned. Or perhaps something happened to the colony that he was a part of.
I have seen cases when the spot where the colony resides is cleaned up and used for some purpose that involves chasing the colony off the property...like construction or the like.

to keep population control down? It seems that when you catch a cat or two out of a colony, fix them, and reintroduce them, and do a few at a time, it really reduces the cat population in that area. If they take all the cats away, others will just move in and repopulate. It is absolutely amazing how many kittens one female cat can have - she can also retain sperm from different male cats, the different sperm fertilize the eggs, and viola, the cat has litter of kittens that are all different from each other.

question for you. My Spidey (The Spides) has one ear that has a clear slit (about 1/8 inch). I noticed it when I adopted him from the shelter, and figured that he had been in a fight at an earlier time.

But, reading this thread, I am wondering if his ear was purposely slit. It is a clean cut.

I know that when I adopted him, he seemed domesticated, but, he had idiosyncracies such as not wanting to be petted on any part of his body except his head.

He is such a different cat now...he wants to be petted everywhere, and, his greatest pleasure is to be on my lap while being stroked.

Anyway, I am thinking this sweet boy might have originally been a feral boy. What do you think?

my Charley (the big orange and white) was eating bread at my bird feeder and very shy when I first saw him. I started feeding him dry food and water. It took a couple of months for him to decide he wanted company and what he wanted to do is to play with my male Siamese Pad Thai. He would come to the window at night and talk to Pad Thai every night around 2:30 am. I think he was asking permission to come in as Paddy is a very dominant cat.

You didn't say where you lived but it got cold here in the DC suburbs around the middle of October that year and I couldn't figure out any other way to get him in. He was already coming around me and wouldn't let me pick him up though.

Finally I put the wet Fancy Feast out there for him one day. And the next day not any food.

His stomach overcame his feralness and he walked right in my place the next day. He did break out immediately from the open window in my small den. But he came right back and I closed the window. I had him to the vet the next day and gradually introduced him to the other two cats. He's been with us ever since and is sweet and affectionate and sleeps on the bed. He still doesn't like any other people though.

He loves to play with Pad Thai and even Lily when she'll tolerate it.

Scared kitties.

One of the things is not to look at them.

If you want to entice the guy ito entering yur house, set up a food bowl closer and closer to your home, (Maybe start out by having it five feet from where he normally gets food from you)

If he enters the house, leave him be.

And eventually hang out in the same room as he does, but look away from him. (You can cheat by having a mirror set up so you can see if he is coming up behind you)

The woman in the TV show made very good progress with her semi-feral cat. It took a while, but first the cat came from under the bed to sit behind her.

She had treats tucked in the seam of her pants.

Eventually the cat was able to allow the woman to pet him.

This is also why cats often seem to gravitate toward people who do NOT like cats. Everyone else in the room may be looking right at them thinking "sweet kitty," but sweet kitty might think those looks are a bit intimidating, so it walks over to the non-aggressive person in the room, the one who has been avoiding eye contact at all costs!LOL

Long Haired cats always gravitate to me.

But I also have hoped it is because they realize deep down inside I like them.