TNR Handbook - Neighborhood Cats

The Neighborhood Cats TNR Handbook
the way, poke holes in each corner of the cardboard and attach to the trap with twist ties.
Place bait in the trap and set it as you would normally.
Never try to pick up kittens with your bare hands unless they are less than four weeks
old or are accustomed to being handled by people. If you want to pick them up, use
gloves with a protective material like Kevlar. Otherwise, those little fangs are very sharp
and liable to leave their mark on your fingers.
Nursing mothers
What action to take when there is a nursing (lactating) mother in the colony depends
in large part on how old the kittens are and whether you know where the litter is located.
Litters of unknown age and unknown location
In colonies that are not well known to the
caretakers prior to the trapping, it is often
discovered after a female cat is trapped that
she’s lactating and may have kittens
somewhere in the territory. One way to see if
a female might be nursing is to lift the trap
high off the ground and look up from below at
the female’s belly. If the nipples are
noticeably distended, there’s a chance she has
a litter. If it’s clear she is lactating, and
sometimes it takes an experienced person to
judge this, and you don’t know how old the
kittens are or where they are located, then you have a difficult choice to make. You
could let the cat go, knowing you may never catch her again and she may go on to have
numerous more litters. Or you could get her spayed as quickly as possible, release her
after 24 hours if she’s alert, and hope any kittens survive in her absence.
When making this decision, there are several factors to consider. Feral kittens
naturally have a high mortality rate, often 50 percent or more, unless the colony is
managed and living in good circumstances. So the kittens may or may not still be alive
when you have the mom in a trap. Second, kittens older than two weeks can survive for
at least one day without the mother while newborns could die within hours. If you can
get the mom spayed and released within 24 hours, then there’s a reasonable chance the
kittens will survive unless they are less than two weeks old.
Some caretakers believe it is wrong to ever take the risk there are kittens who will die
in the absence of their mother. Others believe the responsible thing to do is get the mom
spayed while you can and end her procreation. What might be the determinative factor
for you is the circumstances of the TNR project. On one extreme, you may be working in
a remote industrial area with a large number of feral cats who you may or may not ever
see again after you trap them. In that case, if your policy is to immediately release all
lactating females without spaying them, there’s a good chance you won’t fix enough of
the population to get the situation under control and the project will fail. On the other
extreme, if the nursing mom is a regular in your small backyard colony and you’re certain
she’ll be back and it won’t be too hard to capture her again, then you might decide to let
her go.
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