What can I say about Feral Friends? I hope there isn't a limit in this box. This is a long story,…read morebut I think it needs to be told.
Last year a cat was in front of my office building and she looked so thin, so... I bought some meat from the vendor in the building and fed her, she was very hungry and over the next week she kept coming back and some of my co-workers started feeding her as well. Oops, within a few days we had a litter. 5 kittens - 3 boys, 2 girls and their Mom, whom I lovingly named Pickle. :) Well, we brought cat food (soft) and put it out daily. They liked hanging around in the huge bushes, but we quickly discovered how annoying those bushes were as people tried to catch them to give them a home. Needless to say weeks and weeks passed by and they were getting bigger and since they were bigger, people didn't want them hanging around the property any longer (they didn't mind when they were kittens, you see.), moving on (grumble). The property manager threatened to call Animal Control where they would, more than likely, be euthanized, but... I wasn't going to let that happen and neither were my co-workers. Well, we had to think fast, and this is where Feral Friends came in. They helped us with the process and in our understanding of feral cats, they even gave us a humane trap(with a refundable deposit) for our project. The babies were too old to be domesticated at this point, they said it is recommended that you do this by 8 weeks at the latest, they were 10+ weeks. We set the trap and, ideally, we wanted to release them back where we got them from, unfortunately that wasn't an option. Then we couldn't find any non-kill shelters with room to take our babies and FF provided us with options. 3 of the 5 babies were caught and they were neutered/spayed and received their shots for a very, VERY reasonable price, thanks to the vets recommended by Feral Friends (these vets work *WITH* FF). After much blood (refused to declaw them) the 3 babies had a new home on a farm, where they are taken care of. Without FF I have no idea what we would have done, they worked with us and were so incredibly friendly. Thanks to them 3 big cats have a loving home and I owe them much more than I can ever repay, but they will always receive my support!
After trying to catch the remaining 2 kittens multiple times, they seemed to go find different spots to claim for themselves and that was enough to calm down the kitty cat naysayers; however... recently 1 found her way back over to our building and... we have 6 kittens. And so the saga continues...
I encourage everyone to practice TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) if you have feral cats near you. :) And if you're looking for a cat, check their website, they have tons for adoption! ^.^ Sorry for the epic story, but it needed to be done because I love this place.