The View newspaper, Torrevieja, Costa Blanca - June 19, 2015: I fell instantly in love with the five tiny pairs of eyes staring at me from the patio terrace, even if it was tantamount to experiencing Heaven and Hell at the same moment.
As the only local resident soft (or stupid) enough to feed the neighbourhood waifs and strays, I’ve been sitting for years on a potential Mog-otov Cocktail in the form of a feral population explosion outside my back door.
However, since the alternative would have been to lie awake each night feeling the hunger pains of starving cats, I felt I had no option.
Trapping and neutering the ferals has cost me a fortune in food and veterinary fees – and I’ve also missed out on a few holidays for fear of the menagerie going unfed. There’s no question of putting them in kennels since it’s virtually impossible to lay hands on them.
Trapping and neutering the ferals has cost me a fortune in food and veterinary fees – and I’ve also missed out on a few holidays for fear of the menagerie going unfed. There’s no question of putting them in kennels since it’s virtually impossible to lay hands on them.
I’m told some animal charities have feral-cat programmes which include helping to catch adults and assisting with veterinary fees. If that’s true, all I can say is ….HELP!
Meanwhile, I apologise for any offence caused by the shameless behaviour of an exhibitionist mother-of-five on my patio. Multiple breast feeding is not permitted in full view of passers by – and certainly not when those involved are occupying rent-free accommodation.
A kitty of hope for my doorstep pussies galore
The View newspaper, June 26, 2015: Christine Hoggett’s email was both music to my ears and an instant cure for mew-sickness.
“Most people agree that if you find street kittens and can trap them before they are 12 weeks old you can domesticate them,’’ wrote Chrisitne, who runs the Impact charity for cats and kittens in La Marina Urb+.
And there was silly old me believing I’d have to spend the rest of my life feeding the five baby moggies delivered to my back door by their feral mum three weeks ago.
I felt trapped, unable to resist the the demands of tiny eyes pleading for food, yet deeply concerned that if I continued to indulge them in Mercadona goodies, they would never learn the art of hunting out their own food.
And at the same time so fearful of human beings that there was no hope of them ever being adopted as family pets.
Now, in Christine’s response to my article last week, here was a glimmer of hope for my mini menagerie – and with it a chance to conduct a fascinating public experiment to prove her point about domesticating street kittens. By the time you read this, Christine will hopefully have trapped and collected the kittens, which I guess are eight or nine weeks old, and taken them to join Impact’s 72-strong community of moggies seeking homes.
Now, in Christine’s response to my article last week, here was a glimmer of hope for my mini menagerie – and with it a chance to conduct a fascinating public experiment to prove her point about domesticating street kittens. By the time you read this, Christine will hopefully have trapped and collected the kittens, which I guess are eight or nine weeks old, and taken them to join Impact’s 72-strong community of moggies seeking homes.
I will pay their food bills and veterinary fees and also provide regular updates on their progress on this page. At the end of the experiment, the Famous Five will hopefully be not only irresistibly appealing, but also big enough celebrities to top the bill in the next series of Kitten’s Got Talent.
Next week I hope to publish photographs of the quintet in their new environment. Two are black, one black and white and two are blue-eyed tabbies. At present, it is only possible to stroke them while they ar eating but I now have real hope that, with Christine’s expert guidance, they will make perfect pets in due course.
Impact is a registered charity based and operates out of a tiny shop in La Marina. Christine tells me: “The urbanisation is pretty much free of feral cats as three years ago we ran a big campaign.
“The odd kitten(s) are still found but anything over 12 weeks old is pretty much near-impossible to domesticate as by that age they are independent and have there own routine.
“We have just registered as a protectora which gives us a wider scope. Legally you need to be a protectora to take animals off the streets. Spain is a dog country and with retired people moving here at a fast rate, they do prefer dogs to cats.’’
Christine, who moved to Spain in 1996 when her husband retired from the police force, added: “This kitten season has been huge. We are having dog charities contact us asking to take kittens. “In all honesty, if it was not for the PayPal donations from the British back home we would not be able to do what we do.
“And without the help of the local community and people in the surrounding areas donating their unwanted goods we would not be able to keep the charity shop open.
“It would be great if more talk was concentrated on kittens and cats in local papers but it seems it is all about dogs.’’
Meanwhile, Impact is giving a big discount for spaying cats. Says Christine: “If the vets started taking notice of how high their prices are and lowered them drastically, there would not be this huge problem with feral and unwanted kittens.
“To ask a member of the public to pay between €120 and €140 to spay a female cat is quite horrific. This is why people won’t use vets and let their cats breed.’’
My local vet does at least give me a 30 per cent discount – but I’m not expecting any thanks for forking out €200 last week to have two pregnant females and a straggly tom neutered.
The only benefit, a far as I can see, is that I won’t have two more litters of kittens delivered to my back door in the next couple of weeks.
The only benefit, a far as I can see, is that I won’t have two more litters of kittens delivered to my back door in the next couple of weeks.
The View newspaper, July 3, 2015: I call it Close Encounter of the Purred Kind – and I promise I’m not taking the puss. The voluntary exercise to domesticate six feral kittens brought to me by their proud mum got under way last Wednesday under the expert eye of Christine Hoggert.
Chris, who runs the Impact charity in La Marina, says wild kittens up to the age of 12 weeks can normally be domesticated. And the last few days seem to indicate this theory is largely true. During the three weeks they lived in and around my garden, all six kittens seemed petrified of human contact, and only allowed me to touch them while their heads were jammed into a food bowl.
I feared it would never be possible to pick any of them up, let alone give them a cuddle. Christine quickly discovered that this was not the case. This is how the first few days of the experiment went…
Wednesday June 24: In the roasting heat of a 34-degree afternoon, Christine, volunteer helper Jackie and I managed to trap four of the feral kittens – two black, one tabby and one black and white. Later in the day, I caged a second tabby, together with the mother, and took them to join the others at the Impact shop.
Thursday June 25: The kittens’ mum was taken to the vet for sterilisation and found to be two weeks into a new pregnancy. It was a timely intervention as the black-and-white female had been carrying two deformed kittens. Meanwhile, Christine and her team began to concentrate on the kittens. The initial prognosis was not encouraging. “I must admit they do look like they are beyond help,’’ reported Chris, “but this afternoon I caught them playing in their crate and that gives me even more motivation. If they are playing, then they have the domestic side in them. Our main aim tonight is to separate them and treat their eyes with Trobex. The two black kitties are considerably more friendly than the others.’’
Friday, June 26: Christine received a nasty bite from one of the tabbies as she attempted to clean its weepy eyes. “The bite was purely because her eyes are a mess and she can’t see out of them,’’ she reported. There was, however, ‘’great success’’ during the evening with one of the black kittens. ‘’He/she actually let me clean his/her eyes with Trobex, which is great to use on cats with bad eyes and costs only a couple of euros from the chemist.’’ Christine added: “We have managed to separate this cat from the others and have named him Reggie. His brothers are all eating fine, too.’’
Saturday, June 27: At 5am the kittens were already singing with all their lung power. “Reggie has pretty much turned now and can be picked up,’’ said Chris.’’He/she purrs away while being stroked and the best thing about it is that he/she is boss-eyed!’’
Sunday June 28: Now that the kittens are reasonably settled, it’s a process of taking them to the vet one by one. Whenever a feral cat is taken off the street, a blood test is performed for FELv. The great thing here is that Mummy cat was tested negative, which means the kittens would all be negative, too. Nevertheless they will all be tested when they are a little older.
Monday June 29: Reggie is doing great, though still a little nervy. He will be going for his first vaccination this week but there is great joy in in the camp with the way things have gone so far. The one kitten Christine’s team were a little afraid of – the black and white one – is at this moment running around playing with other kittens. Christine says it will be a slow process but she is confident it will work.
Tuesday June 30: All the kittens are now able to be handled. Obviously if something spooks them they run for cover but this is a big step. They are eating well and their eyes are clearing up, thanks to twice-a-day eye drops.
The View newspaper, July 10, 2015: I headed off to the UK a fortnight ago happy in the knowledge that the latest additions to Casa Donna’s feline family were in safe hands. Even so, I had huge doubts as to whether Christine Hoggett and her Impact Charity volunteers could really convert the five sickly feral kittens into gentle, loving family pets.
So imagine the shock when, just six days after they had been trapped and taken to Impact HQ in La Marina, I received the following Mission Almost Accomplished message from Christine. "One week on from trapping the kittens and their mum, and everything has gone far better than we could have imagined,” she reported, reflecting on the settling-in period and successful spaying of Mum
“We can already say that Reggie, the black kitten we separated from the others early on, is ‘domesticated’. He still likes to have a nip at you when you play with him, but this is down to the fact he is still learning.
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“As these kittens have effectively come straight from the street we have to be careful how the vaccinations are done. They all showed signs of mild cat flu, runny noses, bad eyes and sneezing.
“Giving a kitten its first vaccination when it is like this can sometimes be lethal.
They all need to recover before vaccinations start.
“Reggie is free of all these symptoms. This boils down to us splitting him from his siblings in the first 48 hours.”
And there I was, convinced I’d return to Spain next week to find a cage full of snarling mini-moggies dumped in my overgrown garden behind a hastily-scrawled placard reading ‘Wild and Untrainable’.
How could I ever have doubted Christine’s assertion that feral kittens can become loving family pets with a little help from those who really care? OK, there is still a long way to go, but I’m now convinced the experiment will have a happy ending.
Whether it’s Impact or any other animal charity, just to know there are people out there who really care gives hope to every cat and dog lover in Spain. Particularly in an increasingly cash-strapped Spanish society where the dumping of unwanted pets is in danger of becoming a national pastime.
Say R...it's all about Rosie, Reggie and Ronnie now
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Four weeks ago, Rosie and four of her tiny siblings were adopted by the Impact Cats Charity after spending the first few weeks of their wretched lives in the overgrown garden of an empty El Raso house.
Their mother, a very protective black and white feral, had reared them in the jungle next door to my home before bringing them cunningly to my back door at meal times.
The wide-eyed kittens were both fascinated and frightened by the two-legged monster that fed them, each day and it was only at meal times that I was allowed to get near enough to touch them. Stroking was taboo - their mother made sure of that by hissing every time I came too close for her comfort.
So when Impact’s Christine Hoggett heard of my little problem, she agreed to take part in an experiment to confirm that feral kittens can be domesticated as long as they are caught early enough.
It’s exactly one month since Chris, her volunteer friend Jackie and I began our mission by trapping all but one of the kittens, along with their Mum, and taking them to Impact HQ for assessment.
Mum was sterilised wthin 24 hours and Chris, her son Andrew and the Impact team then got to work on the two black, two tabby and lone black and white tots.
I returned from the UK last week to see the impact of Impact for myself. In Rosie, the change was astounding. No longer was I faced by a frightened feral; here was a beautiful relaxed creature happy to sit on my lap and be stroked. Black boys Ronnie and Reggie (I wonder who they were named after?) had also lost their aggressive streak and the whole entourage were clearly responding to treatment to cure minor ailments like weepy eyes.
Christine tells me: “Rosie should be ready for a home from the middle of August, as will Ronnie and Reggie.’’
Rosie’s identical twin and the black and white kitten are taking longer to adjust but Christine assures me the omens are good.
Last Friday, I managed to trap Charlie, Ronnie and Reggie’s black sibling, and took him to the Impact shop, where the petrified puss leapt up the window shutter and spent the next few hours hiding in the blind’s inner workings.
“We got Charlie down from the window about 8pm,’’ reported Christine later. “He was exhausted and at this very moment is asleep under a bed.
“He has completely relaxed and calmed down and hopefully will also be ready for homing from mid August.’’
Impact Charity can be contacted on 634 330 135. There is also a dedicated PayPal for donations via mail@impactcharity.net
Reprinted from my weekly column in The View (www.theview.es)
