​It has not stopped raining here for weeks, which makes life a bit dull, but is filling the dams nicely for the coming year which will no doubt feature another scorching summer. We will need those dams full for the aerobatic planes and helicopters to gather up their water to dump on fires. Whilst we’re on meteorological matters, I noticed that the peach trees are budding, in December, which is not right at all. And there are mosquitoes! So much rain and so little cold.
There is a segue here to the cats as my colleague from Miau Lemos was telling me that they are noticing that cats are coming into heat – and having kittens - all year round these days, because it does not get cold enough to send their reproduction instincts into dormancy.

Was it really this year that Husky had his outer ear removed? Yes, it was. He is doing so well. He and his bosom buddy Clem Fandango are thriving and may need a controlled calorie regime in the new year. Here they are in the window of the utility room which is where the inside cats are fed, watched by Clem and Husky who cavort around endearingly in an effort to have what everyone else is having. Which is usually the same as what they are having!!

​We said goodbye to Lola during the summer. You may remember she was the ancient little cat from the local town who we adopted for her retirement from living on the streets. She had many health problems and the one that killed her in the end was lymphoma. This is what FIV positive cats often die from and she was FIV positive. It was a very sad and difficult time, in the worst heat we’d ever seen here. She was on a synthetic morphine at the end but her kidneys stopped working and we had to put her down. She is buried between two olive trees in the garden. She made a big impression on us with her sweet and happy nature, despite what life had thrown at her. Which was essentially neglect. She lived to around 20 we think, which is not bad going for a cat who must have had oodles of litters living on the street. The project described below is in her honour.

Unfortunately, Clara Belle, who I wrote about in the last blog, went AWOL some time in October. Up to that time we saw her regularly on the wildlife camera coming for her dinner at the back of the house. I still put food in the storage room there – and it disappears, although at least some of the time it was a hedgehog tucking in! Here is proof! Apologies for the not great pic. 

I have blocked the door with something that should only allow a cat the size of Clara Belle to get in (and/or a hedgehog!), but I have seen the two feral fatties squeezing their way in there too.
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So, what has happened to Clara Belle? I think they did bully her as on the wildlife camera she appeared increasingly furtive. There are various possibilities and I am hoping she has moved to the Ruined Street, very nearby, where some other cats are fed by our neighbours. Or to the village across the way, where there are also some colonies of cats. I have seen a couple of possible sightings of her on the wildlife camera and I hope one day she comes back. Stranger things have happened, and cats are very resourceful. Here she is in the camera a couple of months ago. Note the clipped ear which identifies her as being spayed.

Finally, there has been some huge success with Project Lola . One of the town councillors has been brilliant in taking our proposal to the full council meetings, and we have now had a commitment from the mayor that the council will provide resources for cat food, sterilizations, and even wooden cat houses!! From where we were a few months ago when I was so upset about seeing kittens in the middle of the road, and feeling completely helpless about the obvious population explosion in the town, we have now got these commitments which is the first time in the whole area of the Ribeira Sacra. In parallel with getting the agreements from the mayor, we have been trapping and neutering and have already neutered 12 cats, with the crowdfunding funds from those who kindly supported the project. Here is a cat we eventually trapped and neutered taking advantage of an insulated box on a cold night.

​And here is a recent visitor feeding some happy cats in town.

The Butterfly Cat project continues alongside Project Lola and I wanted also to say thank you to those who regularly help with that. Whilst we don’t need to neuter cats anymore in this village (success!!), your help means we can feed a lot of feral cats in the village, in the local town, and in Monforte de Lemos. Speaking of which here are some of those cats in Monforte de Lemos who benefit from your help. One of them is called El Hijo del Arbol (son of the tree), because he is the son of a female cat who we called the Christmas Tree Cat. He inherited her facial markings, and that seems appropriate for now.

Seasons Greetings All!!

If you can donate please do so here 

Clara had been living under cars on Santa Clara street in Monforte de Lemos, and my compañeros at Miau Lemos asked me if there was any way she could move to the country to live with us, as living like that, with no shelter apart from being under a vehicle, was not sustainable and would end badly.

After a lot of tries, they managed to trap her, and she arrived around the beginning of June, having been de-wormed and deflea-ed and having had her vaccination shots. The vets discovered she had already been sterilised so they clipped her ear so that would always be obvious. It was not clear if she was feral or tame or somewhere in between; and she needed to stay in a cage until she had her bearings. Plus, her second lot of jabs was due three weeks’ later, so we decided it might be better for her to stay in one place in the cage, inside, as we might not be able to catch her once she’d gone outside.

She was very frightened, would hide in the back of the cage, which of course we kept covered with a blanket, and when we put a sort of cat cave ‘pod’ thing in there, inside that she stayed. She had a great appetite though and full bowls would become empty so she was clearly emerging! Plus, the litter tray was being used of course.

 She’s a few years old I would say, and is a pretty tabby with big eyes.

Once she’d been back to the vet for the second lot of jabs and brought back, we started leaving the cage door open and the sliding door to the outside open as well. She would leave, wouldn’t she? Apparently not.

However, there was progress. She started living outside the cage in a polystyrene cat house and actually started coming out to eat – while I was there in the room. And she let me pet her! But she was still very frightened and would hurriedly return to the polystyrene box.

After a week or so of this routine, cage now removed from the room, I again left the sliding door open to the outside. Finally, she decided to venture out one day, while I was there. Wow, how amazing I thought, but then she wouldn’t come back.

So, I guessed Clara had decided she would prefer to be an outside cat, at least for now, and I have not seen her at all 'in person' since then. For a couple of weeks we left the sliding door open and according to the wildlife camera, she came and went to eat during the night. But she was never there in the morning when I arrived to replace the food. Once the videos showed a fox and a dog started turning up, we had to close the sliding door, and now we put food in an outside storage room which has a cat-sized gap in the door. She comes to eat several times each night, but doesn't stay long.

I have been monitoring the situation via the camera, which she seems so accustomed to  (perhaps she likes its red glowing light) that she sat in front of it for hours one night, wearing out the camera batteries as it took video after close-up video of tabby fur!

The only issue seems to be that the two resident feral fatties, Clem Fandango and Huskie, seem to be on to the fact that she comes to eat, and have also been monitoring her. In fact, I’ve been watching them watching her!

I figure as long as she is getting exactly what they are getting to eat, it should not be a problem and hopefully they can become friends. If not, we'll make sure we find somewhere for her a bit away from the house. And I really hope one day she will come along and say hello! Who knows, she might gravitate to being one of the gang, and perhaps even an inside cat eventually - although I think I would describe her as semi-feral. Perhaps she was once a pet, but had some traumatic experiences living as she did which have made her very wary.
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I am so glad Clara has the tell-tale clipped ear of a neutered street cat. There is no way I would be able to know she was still around if not, as there are lots of tabbies!  Here she is, caught on film.

I have just bought some winterised houses for the feral cats and I am hoping she will move into one of those as the nights get colder. I’ll post a pic when they arrive.

Finally, I am starting to work on a feral cat population 'explosion' in another village. More on that later, as I will be trying to raise some funds to do some urgent Trap-Neuter-Returning. Watch this space! Saludos 

Huskie is a big (big!!) black and white guy, one of a feral duo who are fixtures in the garden. His very close friend is Clem Fandango, a large tabby. They are always together.

We’d been watching Huskie’s ears for a couple of years, as you do. Well, one in particular had started to develop some nasty dry-looking sores. I showed photos to a couple of vets who both said pretty much the same thing - ‘looks like squamous cell carcinoma. In a feral cat, that’s going to very hard to treat’. It turned out it wasn’t exactly the treatment (outer ear removal) that would be difficult, it was the recovery element which would mean wearing an e-collar for two weeks before returning to the vet to have stitches removed.

Obviously in a pet cat, no problem. In a feral, how on earth do you (a) manage it for two weeks and (b) then get the animal back into the special small cage used for anaesthetising it …? And what if it escaped with the collar on … it’s tied on with tape so that doesn’t bear thinking about.

Both vets expressed serious doubts about the whole process and thought it may be better to euthanase him when the ulcers got very bad.

When the worst ulcers started bleeding and we saw him rubbing his head against walls, it was time to take the plunge, albeit with some trepidation.

Here he is before the surgery.

Sooo, Step 1 trapping: the last time I had trapped Huskie he had been whisked off to the vet for neutering about 5 years ago. Having a good memory for such things, he wasn’t keen when he saw the trap coming out of the shed!

I kept it wired up for a couple of weeks so it wouldn’t spring, and I kept putting yummy things in it.  After a while, he was going right in. Once this was happening, I booked the surgery, and set the trap properly - the biggest challenge being stopping others thinking this was a brilliantly elaborate way of getting some serious treats!

The day of the surgery came and having trapped him the night before, and transferred him to the special anaesthetic cage, off we went to the clinic. Javier our lovely vet, had a quick look and said yes I can do it, the cancer is not too advanced.

Back home, we’d set up a large cage in the bathroom. And here is Huskie that evening. Easy to manage so far!!

The next day the hard work began.

Step 2: managing him in the cage

Now, Huskie is very feral (there are degrees of feral!). He will not let me touch him. If he accidentally allows me to brush past him, he bolts.

The thing about feral cats is that they really don’t want to be inside a building. When we’ve had one escape a trap inside, or get shut in for some reason, it’s a scary thing. They jump vertically looking for a gap. They see windows as holes that if they can get up to, they can escape out of. The last time it happened I was worried the cat would break his legs with the ferocious and desperate jumping. You just have to quickly open all the doors and hope the cat will run out before it’s hurts itself.

So managing a feral cat wearing an e-collar in a cage indoors means absolutely not allowing any possibility of escape from the cage - even into the house.

So how were we going to open the cage to put his water and food in?, we pondered. Lightbulb moment - Adam found some wooden slats in the garden and we found a way of holding Huskie in one part of the cage securely while we opened the door at the front. We would slide slats in from the top of the cage to the bottom and leaving them there while the door was open. This seemed to work well, and even better, the whole floor slid out of the cage to allow for cleaning.

We knew keeping the cage covered with a blanket, providing darkness, would help to keep Huskie feeling as relaxed and hidden as possible during his confinement.

​You can see the whole set up below, and the wounds early on in the healing process.

So for 15 days we fed him two or three times a day, cleaned the litter tray, and kept it all tidy using this method. He would watch very intently through the slats as he sensed freedom being just marginally closer when the door was open, but he didn’t try to barge his way out.

Another challenge was actually getting him to eat. The collar meant he found it very awkward and put food all over the place and little actually being eaten. We found various ways of propping bowls up so they were higher, and eventually found these special elevated and angled versions. Another challenge met!

Here he is eating (Huskie likes eating, a lot!).​

Step 3: decanting feral cat into anaesthetic cage

Finally, the challenge was how to get him out of the larger cage and into the much smaller wire cage to go to the vet.

The trick with transferring feral cats from one thing to another thing is to use (a) blankets and (b) their fear of you as a human being. The place you are wanting a feral to move to needs to promise darkness and safety, as you remove that very feeling from the original location. So we basically removed the slats, lifted the blanket and stood over the large cage to get him to move into what appeared to be a dark tunnel.

And it worked like a charm. Suddenly he was securely in the anaesthetic cage! Here are the three steps below.

​Major sigh of relief all round. We were on the home straight.

The vet was very pleased with the way the wounds had healed and removed the stitches and the collar under anaesthetic.

And then Huskie came home. The next day we let him out. It was brilliant to see him free again, and the two boys back together.

And just look at him now. He’s still very handsome, and cancer free.

Hopefully these tips will help any other feral cat carers to manage a tricky post-surgery period of confinement. With a bit of equipment, and some patience, it was manageable!!

Now, I'm just waiting for someone to ask me what on earth type of animal is that large black and white creature!!

The above is TP in her younger days, and below, the trapping process.

I think next time will be with Husky, who seems to have skin cancer on his ear. That will be interesting!
​

​Wow, it’s been so long! I can’t believe it, where does the time go etc etc???

Just sneaking in under the rollerdoor as June disappears, so the right hand side of the website registers a slightly less scary gap in blogs than it would if I had left it until July (tomorrow). Obviously much has happened since the last blog in January, the ‘Before Times’, but very little has happened as well. Time seems to have done some strange things of late.

We are now, in rural Galicia, almost back to normal and there is hope – albeit with a fear of sprouts* - that we are now firmly in the ‘After Times’ of the pandemic. I think there is quite a way to go for this pandemic and I’m not complaining about being here. In fact, after years of procrastination or perhaps just sheer laziness, we have started a vegetable garden, and have been pulling out gorgeous lettuces daily.
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And what about the cats? Well, all is rather stable here in the village. Here’s a pic of Chubby Chops II in what our neighbours call his sentry box, and this photo sums things up. Nothing to see here! We have achieved our aim of having a stable colony of adult feral cats, and that’s rather wonderful. I think I saw the small figure of a tabby kitten the other day on the other side of the village, but for now I am not aware of an imminent population explosion.

There are of course other needy feral cats and other needy animals generally. Here’s a plug for a local animal sanctuary Miño Valley Animal Sanctuary http://minovalleyfarmsanctuary.org/en/ which makes our small feline endeavour look like – well, a small feline endeavour! They’re amazing people, caring for farm animals who would normally be slaughtered for some reason, be it old age and perceived uselessness or being born the ‘wrong’ sex. They have horses, and donkeys, sheep and goats, hedgehogs and chickens, and all sorts of animals. Even cats.
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Speaking of cats, we are increasingly concerned about a colony of feral cats who live on a busy road in the centre of Monforte de Lemos. We noticed them recently when we were having a drink and a tapas on a terrace, as a skinny, very pregnant female came and sat near our table asking for scraps. It turns out there are ‘many’ according to the barman, and they live on a vacant building site behind that bar. So, we’ve started feeding them. 

We entertained the idea of trapping them all and bringing them to the village but had to rethink that idea. As a friend said to me, their home may not be ideal, but it's their home. The village would not be their home. How would we keep them from trying to get back to town? How would we make sure they stayed together? We don’t have a handy place to lock in 10 or so feral cats for two weeks until they become accustomed to a new location. So, for now, we are feeding them in situ. 

​There are obviously others in town who feed the feral cats. A few blocks away we saw this recently which was a relief, but the colony above – near the ancient Colegio - seem perpetually thin and we see them darting in and out of parked cars on that busy road. 

​I’m thinking of starting a new project called “Los Amigos de los Gatos de la Calle” … but will need local help. I’ll update you next time.
 
*Finally, we all of course live in fear of further resurgences - or ‘rebrotes’ - of Covid 19. Use machine translations at your peril! 

It has been dawning on us lately that we have neutered everyone! We have a largely stable colony of mature cats – mostly males – who are all neutered. And we have helped our neighbours neuter their barn-full as well. Of course, there is the odd incursion, more on that below.
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Further afield in town the other day, I looked for Massy, the elderly ginger female who we helped some months ago, and was pleased to see her lying in the sun, seemingly quite content. I wanted to give her the flea treatment that I have in my glove box (doesn’t everyone drive around with spot-on in the glove box?) and gave her a cuddle and applied that. She seemed fine, purred loudly, and her fur is still soft. She still has the pink diamante collar we gave her, looking rather less pink.  Here she is:

Back in the village, we had been worried about Bandido who we hadn’t seen for a couple of months, but he turned up earlier this week so that was a relief. But we are still worried about Ronnie who arrived recently with what looks like gingivitis. This is sometimes a sign that one of the killer viruses has taken hold, so that is concerning. I gave him antibiotics for a couple of days and since then we haven’t seen him, so can only hope he is fine and eating elsewhere. There is nothing else we can do. Ronnie is very feral so if he gets very ill, I suspect he’ll keep away from us.

2CC is trying to join the musketeers but they are having none of it and there are skirmishes and howl-oriented face-offs between him and Husky quite often in the courtyard. I guess they are still figuring out the pecking order, but for now 2CC gets his meals in his own hut, away from the others.

In addition to the stable 8-12 feral cats we feed, there are a couple of unneutered males who drop in from time to time, and again it is Husky who takes on the role of “guardian of the Butterfly Cat Project” (he’s keenly aware of the relationship between supply of cat food and demand for cat food!) and tries to turf them out. We watched with amusement an altercation – one that did not come to blows or even physical contact - the other day in the finca where a horse is kept. Husky and this unknown white and tabby tom were within millimetres of each other’s faces, backs arched and tails fluffed up, ready for action.  

She (the Galician mountain horse – see picture below) was munching away seemingly oblivious to the drama a few meters from her, and I was thinking how good it would be if she broke up the flight. After all she’s quite large, presumably they’d run if she approached. As if she had read my mind, she sauntered over to them and put her nose right between them, with the desired effect. They scarpered. Thanks Loretta. The carrots are on their way!
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Speaking of the horse, she is a major curiosity to the London 4. They have never seen anything like her. Is she a large cat, a placid long-legged dog? What on earth is she, and how does she get by eating grass?

​I leave you with Feeder of the Month of December 2019 – my sister Anna. Anna and Jason have become the latest sponsors of the Butterfly Cat. Many thanks both! 

They were visiting from Australia where, dear reader as you will know,  there are catastrophic fires in the south east  which have been burning for months. A recent report from the EU https://www.eea.europa.eu/ predicts longer droughts and longer summers in Spain, and at the same time an increase in ‘heavy precipitation events’ in areas such as Galicia – which I think we saw a sign of in November/December. I guess the problem with too much rain at any one time is soil erosion and that you can’t capture it all. However, I think the dams are full ready for our own fire season.  I wish I could send some heavy precipitation over to south eastern Australia. 

Just a quick update this month. We have finally taken Ronnie (named after Ron from Harry Potter as he’s ginger) to the vet for neutering. I trapped him on Thursday night, and he had the op on Friday. I haven’t seen him since he raced off out of the cage on Saturday morning, but this is not unusual. He is very feral and the whole experience will have been frightening so I imagine he’ll give Fort Feral a wide berth for a while. We’re hoping he can join the musketeers once his hormones settle down and he smells less threatening. The vet found he had ‘Thelazia callipaeda’ (eye worms) and treated those as well. This is a horrible, painful disease, from a nematode carried by fruit flies, and if untreated can lead to blindness. Here’s a pic from a while ago of Ronnie.

We also took one of the many black feral cats from the other side of the village. The neighbour had brought her around having trapped her and I was assured she was the female who had given birth about 6 weeks ago. Ahem!!!! I dutifully took her to the clinic the next day only to discover she most certainly was not that cat, as during surgery the vet could not find her uterus. Poor little cat. She’d already been neutered. She’s now back home with her family and hopefully is not too traumatised.

This demonstrates the importance of ear tipping (snipping off the very tip of the ear to show the cat is neutered). The vet has now done this and the hunt continues for the mother of the kitten ...

Finally, thanks to Jane and Trevor for looking after Fort Feral and its inhabitants (and the rest of the menagerie) while we were away. You were right about Ronnie! He needed to be top of the list.

Then there is 2CC (that’s Chubby Chops II) who we think - by the chops - is Chubby Chops’ son. He is quite a character. He’s young and could be described as cocky, and appears to have decided that he’d quite like to join the gang. ‘The gang’ would be those regulars, pets and ferals, who hang around the courtyard, and 2CC’s problem is that they are not quite so keen!! They may be happier with the prospect once he’s neutered so we’ll need to schedule that in. More on neutering males later. In the meantime here is 2CC taking up a tactical position near the cat door in the gate, close to where we feed him (away from the others!).

To cut a long story short, Masi had terrible fleas (and that was causing the dermatitis on her back as she tried to scratch it), she has a lump on her side that is breast cancer, she has a misaligned jaw from an accident, she had gingivitis and she had worms in her eyes (thelazia). All this at the age of 15! Blimey!! The thelazia, gingivitis and dermatitis were all treatable and we started her on antibiotics. We kept her for around 10 days treating her and brushing her. She really is a gorgeous girl and very affectionate. In the end we took her home and we have shown her owners the flea treatment she needs monthly to avoid the dermatitis happening again. Now we see her in the village occasionally and she is so much better!  And she has a new collar:

It was so lovely to have been able to have such a visible impact on a cat. 

That experience was followed by a far sadder one in the form of Zorro, one of the musketeers. He died about three weeks ago after losing a huge amount of weight due to either feline FEV or FELV or both. We trapped him and took him to the vet twice but there was nothing to be done but palliative care. The other musketeers helped, Clem and Husky grooming Zorro as we nursed him, to the extent that you can nurse a feral cat. We all miss him hugely, and this event has underlined the importance of neutering males, as these untreatable viruses are passed on by fighting. Yes, males do become more social and less aggressive when they’re neutered - that’s a good thing! Zorro was neutered but it may have been too late in his life, or he was bitten more recently by another male who was highly likely to be unneutered.

RIP Zorro the Magnificent, 10 August 2019.