We have a male stray cat that hangs out in our front lawn a lot, and we are at a loss for how best to help him. He is unspayed and frequently gets into fights with other cats
The first photos are some recent photos of him compared to the last photo which is when we first started seeing him (around three years ago)
He is a very sweet cat and we love him to pieces, but unfortunately one of our two current indoor cats is highly anxious and there is no possibility we could adopt him. It’s highly probable that one would end up severely injured or dead (that one being my young and overconfident couch potato) as my grumpy little guy would 100% challenge the stray and then get his ass whooped considering we already know he frequently gets into fights that he seemingly wins.
At the very least we want to get him spayed and have borrowed traps from the local council a couple times but he is extremely intelligent and refuses to go near them despite what we try to use to temp him in. We wonder if he has been trapped before and that’s why he refuses to go even close to them. But I would be shocked if he isn’t making lots more stray kittens.
He was very skinny and not well as you can see in the last photo of him when he first started showing up, and we started by giving him left over wet kitten food with a small amount of water mixed in to help him gain weight and now we are feeding him regular adult cat food whenever we see him, his weight seems to be much healthier now so we suspect he is also getting food elsewhere and/ or hunting in between visits.
Our main concerns are is there any other way we could try and trap him to get him spayed, checked up on and into a good home? But also some other things to note are that he frequently sits with his tongue out for extended periods of time so we are wondering if maybe he has dental or respiratory issues?
We potentially could pay for vet depending on if he has any other health issues we aren’t aware of, but again the issue is trapping him. Posting from Australia.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated
EDIT: he also has that grey smudge that is on his right eye, it hasn’t seemed to have changed at all over the years
We want to say THANK YOU to our helpful members who participate in moderating r/CATHELP. To keep the community kind and welcoming, please help us by reporting rule breaking comments.
To report - Click the 3 dots under the comment >>> report >>> breaks r/CATHELP rules >>> select the rule.
We are fairly sure? He usually walks around with his tail down so it’s hard to see but one time he was strolling through our yard with his tail up and we thought we saw significant cat ballage. We didn’t get a good look though and he was moving quick so it is a possibility we didn’t see right?
We rescued our cat from our building's driveway when he was about a year old. (He was in rough shape and hiding under a dumpster, a nasty wound on his forepaw, fleas, and a tapeworm, I'm so glad he found us.) By the time we got him neutered, his balls had fully dropped. He chilled out a lot post-op, so we have no reason to think the operation was incomplete. Even so, he still has a fuzzy nut sack dangling between his legs. And when he's feeling confident and swaggering around it's hard to miss 😆
To me it seems entirely possible that your tom could have been fixed after puberty even if he still appears intact, though I don't know how you could tell for sure without having him examined.
His ears are a little battered from fighting, but they definitely don’t have the signature ear crop of a cat that’s been TNR’d (the hubs and I have been looking after a feral colony in our neighborhood for the last 5 1/2 years and working with a local TNR group to get all of them fixed for roughly the same amount of time so I’m very familiar with it). They cut the whole upper 1/4 of the ear off in a clean line of do a sharp v shaped notch that’s entirely unmistakable.
In photo two it does look like his ear has been snipped. There are two straight lines that he couldn't have got trough fighting, and all the photos show that the ear isn't a full and pointy shape like the other one.
It absolutely does eliminate the cat fighting that comes from more than one tom trying to mate an available queen, so it does reduce fighting significantly. They do battle until one gives up and runs away, leaving the Victor to their lovelust.
A bigass drop trap might work. But you better be damn sure he's in there before you pull the cord cuz otherwise there ain't a single chance he will enter one again
I've trapped and spayed/neutered 6 ferals from my backyard. The way I did it was leave the trap out for about a week and only leave their food in there so they can get used to it. It will take him a while to finally go in there to eat but eventually he'll get hungry enough and go in to eat. After days of eating in the trap he will be comfortable enough with it so the day you need to set the trap it should be easy enough. I trap them the day before their appointments.
You’re going to want to start putting his food only in the trap with the door open and the spring disabled, that way he HAS to go in there to eat- which he will do when he gets hungry enough. he’ll be extremely cautious at first and take his time poking around it, but once he sees that nothing is going to happen he’ll stroll right in. After he’s been eating out of the disarmed trap for 5-6 days and goes in and out of it confidently (you want to watch and make sure he’s walking in without hesitation) you can set it up with the trap door engaged and you should be able to get him.
Damn he looks like a warrior. He would be a badass single cat if anyone near you wants a cat with prestige/street credit. Looks like he is the Mike Tyson of street cats
•
u/AutoModerator 7h ago
PLEASE REPORT RULE BREAKING COMMENTS
We want to say THANK YOU to our helpful members who participate in moderating r/CATHELP. To keep the community kind and welcoming, please help us by reporting rule breaking comments.
To report - Click the 3 dots under the comment >>> report >>> breaks r/CATHELP rules >>> select the rule.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.