I absolutely would continue to feed it. I wouldn’t force it to come in, but if you could catch it and are willing to pay the money, it should have its shots and be neutered. If it were to get rabies that would be a terrible thing.
No, I asked for advise about keeping the cat in and the vote is in. Carry on!
My beloved Sinny was an indoor cat with supervised outside visits. He never wandered more than 10 feet away from me and was always in the yard. He was de-clawed when I got him, I would have never done it…but I had him altered after breeding him once (he was a pure bred Himalayan).
My personal feeling is keep them in. I don’t like the thought of what could happen. Many cats do fine on leashes, maybe you should try it.
Feministmama, when the cat is ready to have you as his person, he will let you know. He is still gaining your trust now with you feeding him.
What she said! 
We tried a harness to take her to the vet. Imagine a blender on the end of a string! :lol:
Is there someone you know who owns a humane animal trap? You could try that with a can of tuna inside…see if he’ll bite…just so you can take him to get him fixed. We dont need any more feral kitties in the world…
Then, I guess I would have let him live the only (sad) life he’s used to…he’s lucky he’s found you to feed him without asking anything in return! 
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I agree with Ingrid.
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Our cat is twelve & you couldn’t pay him (in catnip) enough to only be an indoor cat. Both the cat & i hate litter boxes. We had to use one when we moved from the Seattle area 7 years ago. I don’t think we made it the recommended length of time though. He used one maybe once when we went to Disneyland this xmas. The neighbor let him out in the morning & back in in the evening. We also have a cat door on our garage, where all the neighborhood cats come to get out of the weather. That is the only place Baby will tolerate visitors on his property.
That’s the way my old cat was, which is why I’ve been torn about this one. Somehow, my other cat had “street smarts” which I don’t know this one to have. Just this morning there were two young woodchucks on my deck and she was going absolutely nuts at the window. I think she would have gone after them if she’d had the chance, and even though chucks aren’t agressive, if they had defended themselves, she would have lost.
When I got divorced, I lived in an apartment where we werent allowed to have pets (GASP!) when we got Pooey Foosums. So she was an indoor gal. A year later when we got our house, she just didnt want to go out. When she did she was frantic to get inside. She just isnt comfy in the big bad world, she is a bit of a timid girly.
OOOHhh… how cool!! I LOVE woodchucks!
All we get are crappy, crafty squirrels who are eating all of the birdseed from the feeder and breaking my flowers. grrrrrrr… damn rodents :mad:
-hh
Well! In people are so sure that’s the best way and Outdoor people the same. Highly opinionated…
I could never ever deny my cats roaming outside and chewing grass and running down the hill. We have a city apartment and a country place… for the past 10 years. We’ve had 3 cats who have always gone outdoors…
Tuppence, the sweetie who died of cancer at age 12, and
Paolo & Toisie who can’t wait to come up from the city and go out. They go out in the morning for about a half hour, come in to sleep all day, then go back out around 6 for an hour or so. When they were little if they started down the driveway towards the road we yelled (or went and chased them) and now they never venture down there. Now they’ve settled into sitting on the chairs on the front porch and watching the world go by (one truck every hour or so)
We get their shots regularly and brush them etc. There’s no problem. There was a hawk yesterday however and I ran around screaming at it… (how neat you have hawks hedgehog!)
I would never let them be out at night (there’s a few coyotes around now) and we always keep an eye on them…
Btw, there’s a woman vet upstate New York who REFUSES to declaw cats. She wrote an article on it and says they have that phantom pain thing like amputees do. My mum did that and I just cringed… yuk.
[color=blue][/color] Femininistmama....[color=black][/color]
I would definitely keep feeding that poor baby but that’s it.
If she wants to get to know you better she will.
Ok, that's all, but I can't help posting this![/b]i grew up on a farm that was very cat friendly. we had new cats all the time including many stray cats. most of the strays became friendly cats fairly quickly when they realized that they were gonna get loved up on and whoever was mean to them that made them run away wasn’t there anymore. we had one cat though that came to live with us that NEVER got friendly. Drove all of us nuts because she was our only siamese cat and we thought she was beautiful. She stuck around for YEARS and never left and never really got pleasant. She had babies and everything. It wasn’t until she was quite old that we were finally able to really give her any love.
i would say if that cat has been living outside for many years and has never gotten sick then it is doing better than the rest of us and we should prolly leave it alone. I would watch for any behavior that starts to look rabid of course, because you never know, but other than that i would let it be. My guess is that after a certain point in its life, if it hasn’t had any of the shots, they would probably do more harm than good. Cats have been living in the wild for a long time without shots…this one appears to be doing okay too!
i agree with the indoor cat -ness… my mom had an ourdoor/indoor cat… she had fleas … my mom never put one of the flea collers on her becuase she would say “god forbit it gets caught on something and strangles her” everone in the neiborhood knew she was ours and she would whore food off of everyone she could hold her own… kickin other cat’s butts and even dogs… all this fun stuff you wonder why i say indoor… well our neibor has kids and they knew that she was ours but they were little bastards… they shot her with a BBGun and thats what killed her at the age of 19
my other cat who used to be an outdoor cat when he had another owner… anyways he was hit by one car and survived and was also hit by a truck and survived… had pins in his legs and not good…
if you have a yard and your cat wants out they make a netting domey thing you can attach to a pet door so they have outtie -ness too
Link to netty domey thing here
just a thought
[size=2]**mod squad was here 
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I saw that netty thing in a catalog. I thought it was the funniest thing! I think I’d rather keep the cat indoors than put her in that. Torture! All those butterflies–so close and yet so far.
our kitties stay inside all the time. they’re declawed (all 4 paws) and neutered. Stanley, who we got from the pound and was always an inside cat, is obsessed with outside and tries to get out every time we open the door. Whenever we go inside we have to shout “MOVE” because he’s right by the door. It’s even funnier when we put in the screens, because he just meows his head off when we’re outside. Cheddar, OTOH, was a barn kitten, and ever since we brought him home when he was 6 weeks oldor whatever, he HATES outside. The first time I took him out after we brought him home he crawled down my shirt and tried to claw his way into my bra. He moans like crazy even when he’s in the carrier outside. We’re not necessarily “cats must be indoors” people, but since we got them both declawed, we’re afraid they wouldn’t be safe outside. Of course, if they did have claws, we’d be afraid of them getting fleas, or barfing up birds and mice in the basement. I just couldn’t stand to have them away from me, anyhow 
They certainly look content!
you tell me that the one on the left doesn’t look like it is smiling!..lol
[quote=“Ingrid”]
I saw that netty thing in a catalog. I thought it was the funniest thing! I think I’d rather keep the cat indoors than put her in that. Torture! All those butterflies–so close and yet so far.[/quote]
but thats what makes it funny :roflhard: