Our Feral Cat and Kitten Rescue

After more than thirty years, AAS is still trapping and spaying or neutering’ the adults in large colonies in BC’s Interior. We successfully trapped and spayed all the forty females, so reproducing has stopped, Next we have to do the males.

All the kittens were tender-trapped, and all of them were tamed, though many of them, even at four weeks, were

extremely feral and required a great deal of time and attention.

Vaccines, deworming, spaying, neutering, treating injuries, teeth, ears, eyes, and any other conditions that needed doing, are always done. But all that takes extra money.

If there are no illnesses to treat, kittens cost, on average, $50 each and females cost $225. We are only able to do about 30 kittens and 20 females a year because of money constraints.. Females give birth so it’s more important that we do the females.

When you think of how many feral cats AAS done this for and for so many years, it’s understandable that we need help – just to pay the bills. We and our volunteers do all the work, but there would be no work, no help, no rescuing without the help of our donors.

Some of the adults were tameable, but very few. They are wild animals, far wilder than many other wild animals such as squirrels, who almost beg to be your pet, or horses, some of whom soon let themselves be stroked by the one who brings the hay and apples all winter. Even birds are more tameable, Steller’s jays particularly, who are bold as brass, ordering you to go get those peanuts, then taking them out of your hand.

Some well-meaning rescuers never let the unadoptable cats go back to their families: they keep them in confinement for the rest of their lives. I’ve seen these poor creatures hiding for the rest of their lives, only coming out at night to eat and drink. It’s a form of benign cruelty. AAS soon saw that and from that point, in 1986, we began returning the ferals to their family colonies where they were happy. Volunteers feed and keep an eye on them as long as the colony persists. Within a few years most disburse for natural reasons. But they have lived the only way they want to.