We took Reba to a barn/garden home to join her partner in crime Rufus (who was relocated a week earlier but Reba needed a vax booster before she could go). Rufus is a super sweet boy but sprays a lot so could not be adopted to an indoor only home. These two hit the barn/garden kitty jackpot. Their caregiver is an older gentleman who makes a lot of handcrafted wood items from reclaimed lumber and he put the confinement cage on wheels so he could move the cats over to the workshop when he was working, move them near him when he was working out front, etc. These cats will be so spoiled rotten!
We also relocated three ferals to an almost two hundred acre farm and set them up in the breezeway of the hay barn - good crosswind for airflow, nice and shady, and then lots of hiding places for once they are released. MG (Mean Girl) and Kiki (otherwise known as Evilina) and Rhonda were relocated together. Rhonda is the only one that won't scare the barn owners as they take care of them. MG and Kiki are pretty intimidating, even though they are caged, I'm sure the mice are scared! When we relocate three cats together, we set up the cages a little differently than we do when it's just a two cat relo. With a 2-cat relo, we use a 48-inch cage with a carrier inside on one side, litterbox next to it, and food/water up front.
But with a 3-cat relo, we use two 42-inch double door cages, open the front door of one and put it to the side open door of the other and zip-tie the heck out of it (really - there is no escaping we use that many ties!!). We put a large carrier and toys (cats have to have something to do while confined) in one of the cages and the food, water, and litter in the other cage. This is especially optimal when we relocate very fractious cats as the barn owners won't have to get their hands anywhere near the kitties! They'll be caged for about 21 days and then the cage doors opened and cages left up for a week or two. We have a 95% success rate at cats sticking around and we hope this is another success story.
3 comments:
Wow - congrats on the adoption and the relocates. That is quite a set up and we have are paws crossed for everyone. :)
Hope all goes well with the barn cats - great set up and you are very thorough!
Thank you. We've relocated about 200 high-risk cats now and are pretty much experts at it. We were fortunate to have guidance from BarnCats.org of Texas when first starting out. After the first dozen relos, we tweaked protocols, after the 50th (or so) - tweaked again slightly. Now, they are as close to perfect as we can get.
We only relocate the cats that absolutely for whom the "R" (return) in TNR cannot be done. High risk ferals/semi-ferals that someone is trying to poison/shoot, etc. We typically have over 40 cats on the barn cat wait list at all times.
Occassionally (like Rufus), we have cats that cannot be adopted to indoor home because of inappropriate litterbox habits (not occassional issue, but constant issue). After having cats tested every which way for infection, kidney stones, etc, if they are healthy just naughty, we work to find them barn/garden homes that want a friendlier cat.
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