Introduction

An alley cat life is nothing of a fairy tale. I've chosen to take a playful tone, and to allude to fairy tales calling the cats "fairies with tails" and the blog "Fairy Tails", to tell you about the "happily ever after" stories and  also the sad stories, then leave the sadness  in a far away land and in a forgotten time.

So, I help the alley cats. In my city, alley cats are considered wild life and it is illegal to feed wild life. However, the city and animal care organizations came up with a plan that became an ordinance. You can legally feed them if you register them as a colony, and yourself as a colony caretaker, and follow the rules they've set. The rules are that you stay with them as they eat and you clean the leftover food so no other animals (mostly rats) are attracted by that food. Also you do your best to neuter/ spay them and to find homes for the friendly ones and the kittens.

I inherited my first colony from a neighbor that moved away. This colony is stable. All the six cats are spayed and know their way around, and the neighbors know them. In the last four years there were just few newcomers. Two were friendly and got adopted and two stayed around just for few days and were in very bad shape so I suspect they perished.

The two year ago my husband had a project in a transitional, up and coming neighborhood, and saw few cats several days in a row. One day he found a lost kitten around 3-4 weeks, and brought her home. We later found that her mom died. I nursed this kitten, and my husband started to go regularly to feed this colony. He counted thirteen cats. There was a local man feeding them just enough for them to stay alive, and they had shelter in a broken down garage. They were looking good. As the summer months passed, few new kittens appeared and then... disappeared. And as the winter came he saw how half of them got sick. The majority of them recovered, three disappeared.

Driving regularly tough that neighborhood he found cats on every single alley.

With spring came more kittens. Knowing from the previous year that they probably won't make it on their own, he tried to catch them... unsuccessfully. Then some got sick and got too weak to run. He brought them home. He continued feeding the outdoor ones, and then during the summer he got home few more kittens and few adults cats that were friendly, some sick. The majority made it, few didn't. Some of them got adopted by our friends. As we looked to spayed/ neuter the adults ones, we found  animal care organizations that subsidized this surgery, bringing it to just around $50. That was a big relief, because we payed the regular veterinarian for all the other issues they were having. So we were helping few cats, by bringing them indoor, but what about all the others (many)  that were outdoors? I mean we were and are still feeding them...

We realized that we are in over our head, and we started to contact all organizations we could think off. We've learn that the bigger the organizations are, the more inefficient they've got. They all have a set of rules and wouldn't stray from them. Their big push is to TNR. Trap, Neuter and Release back.  This make total sense for the true feral cats, as you stop them for multiplying. The friendly ones should be adopted but this is limited by the space in shelters.

We started to work with one organization, Org T. For TNR they would even send somebody to trap the cats. My unhappiness is that they spay even the really pregnant cats (on the other hand we saw with our own eyes the kittens rarely make it to become adults), and also, after the surgery they keep the cats in for just one day. If complications would arise after surgery and the cat was back outdoor, then what? We did TNR few and they were released after a day and they were fine, but it was mild spring weather, I would still be cautious to use them in summer or winter. The situation is even more complicated as we don't live in that neighborhood. I'm looking into other organizations policies now, to hopefully start doing TNR systematically.

I am very happy that after few months of learning their ways, I'm able now to work with Org T, towards adopting the friendly cats. I'm trying to give them healthy and already spayed/ neutered cats, and two at a time. that are friendly to each other. If two of them go in together, and stay in the same cage, they sooth each other. I found that this is a recipe for them to get adopted quickly. If they are sick or need spay/neuter surgery they need to stay in their hospital first, isolated, and they occupy the precious space, but also get stressed and then harder to get adopted.

We registered the colonies trough Org T. They asked at the end of last year to count all the cats in the colonies. It came to 75. This is where we are at. I'll keep you updated with what will come, and the new cats I'll meet, but I'll also share the "tales" of the cats I've met along my way.

At this point I think I'll have three categories of posts:
- Tales of the fairies I get to know better that are gonna be "chapters" in the overall story (see the next post "Summary") but I feel I can write the tale only when I have the ending... that "and they lived happily ever after"
- Diary kind of entries of what happens in the present
- Opinions and resources, so I can put together what information and thoughts I've got along the way.