hi, just joined this site after having a trawl through the list of groups.
used to be a real cat hater back in uk but this all changed a few years ago.
we had our house built here in the gers and it soon became a regular diner for many of the neighbourhood's felines who arrived to be fed "snacks".they were not encouraged to come inside the house and everything was fine. in early august three years ago the elder female from next door went into labour on our terrace and duely gave birth to four beautiful replicas of her self. we made her up a sleeping box lined with old towels as it was very late by then. next morning we took the still sleeping family back next door and then hitched up the caaravan and set off for a two week holiday.
on our return there was no sign of the mother/kittens for about six days until the memsahib saw the mother out on the edge of the side terrace which made us feel a lot better. this feelings of elation were soon dashed when she moved towards us and in so doing left two bloody trails behind her. we went into panic mode and made up another towel lined box and took her back to our neighbours thinking that she had been injured and had laid in one of the surrounding ditches for a few days. the actual story was a trifle different however as we were informed by the said neighbour that she had been like this for about six days and he was still deliberating on what to do to remedy the situation. we offered our assistance by way of taking her to the vets etc as we had been quite taken in by her during her visits to our snack shop. he casually dropped her on the floor and said he would have a ponder.
twenty minutes later there were an additional two red trails on the terrace and it was at that moment we realised that she had decided where her future lay. our neighbours were fully aware of the revised changes of domicile and were quite happy to see her with us. we took her to the vets for treatment for her injuries, various injections and a course of parafin to unblock her "internals". the memsahib spent hours massaging her back legs and she is fully up and about, albeit with a slight limp.her daughter has also joined the household. we have had them both "done", on a BYGOF at the vets, as two are enough for us to be honest.
we have named the mother milly and the daughter whitey and between them they rule the house, no change there then! between them they protect their "turf" against some pretty formidable tom,s and the occasional dog.
with regard to the visitore some people are experiencing, we installed a computer controlled catflap that only allows our pair to enter the house through it. a bit of an outlay admittedly but for plain piece of mind.........
that's it for now,
fred