1.5 days of taming feral kittens and I'm ready to throw in the towel

[luvmycat]

Originally Posted by Giesela

They both have really loose stool, googling has lead me to believe this is fairly common.

If you can get your hands on it, there's an herbal supplement from "The Honest Kitchen" called "Perfect Form"...it has slippery elm, papain, papaya leaf, and a few other things that help immensely with diarrhea...I gave some to the last kitten I adopted because his stool was horribly loose when I took him in, and it cleared up in a day! Chamomile is also great for aiding in digestion, as well as calming anxiety and expelling parasites. You can brew some as a tea and pour a bit into their food...mine really love the taste of it!

Originally Posted by Giesela

As for helping ferals vs. pets vs. whatever. I figure there's enough misery for everyone to have their niche. No sense in judging them. I've a lot of people say why don't you help kids. My response is why don't you help the elderly? Or disabled? Or......? Hey if someone wants to help people I'm all for it. Helping is good whatever it is. I'm not good at people, I'm better with animals so I play to my strengths. Plenty to go around.

And no, the human animal is not my favorite species. So?

100% agreed! My take on it is that humans have rights, animals don't. If a child comes onto my property and vandalizes, throws rocks at my dogs, or pees on my flowers, he is protected by the law and if I even TOUCH him, even if it's only to stop him from pulling up my marigolds, I will go to jail. If a feral cat merely passes a cat-hating human on the street, that human can torture and kill it and will probably only get a slap on the wrist and maybe a fine. So sick and twisted. The human animal is not my favorite species, either.

Giesela, you are doing a great thing to help these cats and kittens, and as a fellow cat lover I want to express my deepest thanks to you! It sounds like the 2 you have taken in are doing really well in a short amount of time, and hopefully they'll learn to enjoy affection and contact and the joys of being spoiled indoor companions to some lucky human out there! I just want to add that I think both puppies and kittens adjust better in pairs, and it ends up being easier (in my experience at least) as far as rambunctious/destructive behavior because they have each-other to play with. So I think it's a good thing that you have them together as long as you continue to handle them regularly. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the purr-fect human or family comes along and decides to take both of them together!!!

[Carlitos M]

I have six feral kittens that I am trying to socialize. It's really hard as I work a full-time job. I read somewhere that they should be separated. Is there any place I can take them to be socialized?

[Rowan123]

Originally Posted by Carlitos M

I have six feral kittens that I am trying to socialize. It's really hard as I work a full-time job. I read somewhere that they should be separated. Is there any place I can take them to be socialized?

Thank you for trying to help them. I would contact some cat rescues and see if they could help. They will probably ask you to surrender the kittens to them. They can be socialized if they're together though.

The kittens will need vaccines and will need to be spayed and neutered anyway and unless you can afford to do that for all 6 it's better to call a rescue now. It's much harder to find a place for older cats. If you don't get them fixed, you'll be overrun with cats pretty quickly.

Good luck.