Setting the stage

The kittens are losing their blue eyes and are becoming more interested in playing with each other than being around their mother. This, according to the folks at Alley Cat Allies, means that it's time to try to trap the mother cat and get her spayed. It also means that the clock is ticking for the young kittens. Although feral kittens can be successfully socialized as late as 10-12 weeks, it's significantly harder to expose them to human contact that late in their development. By that time, they've internalized a fear of humans, and may always be somewhat sketchy and shy in their relationships with people. And the sketchier the kittens behave towards human beings, the harder it is for them to get adopted. So, our relationship with the kittens and Slinky is taking a different turn.

On the advice of several feral cat websites, we've started putting the cats' food outside near a carrier or other box. Each day, you move the food closer and closer to the carrier, until the food is actually in the carrier itself. This gets the cats/kittens used to going inside something in order to get their meal, which makes the trapping process infinitely easier, as one might imagine.

We've started setting the food out in little increments -- kind of like a "trail" towards the main meal inside the carrier. At first we just put the open carrier outside, but the cats didn't seem to mind it at all, so we went onward with the process, setting the stage for the actual trapping experience.