Hard stray, feral, what names we use influence the world

5/26/02

Subject: Terminology: feral, "hard stray" -- changing how we think

Hi all,

The "spectrum of socialization" is something I've thought about a lot over years. I believe there are "true ferals", but they are rarely trapped, and someone might do TNR for quite a while without encountering a true feral. I believe most of the "feral" cats we catch, are what I call "hard stray".

In the FILES section of http://groups.yahoo.com/group/feral_cats in the folder "About starting rescue", I've defined my spectrum of socialization, and what I call true feral, and hard stray.

So everyone starts saying "These cats *I* trap are true ferals!" If you're interested, please read my piece on it. There is quite a difference between a true feral and a hard stray. A hard stray is not tame, can be heck on wheels to deal with. But a true feral is different in quality, not just in quantity. They are "disinhibited" -- can use much more of their force, than a hard stray can.

The example that really drives this home, is we caught an extremely sick true feral cat -- only caught her since she was literally dying. Went to ER. Tech says open the carrier (we used to catch many hard strays, with carriers; with practice and some food training, many of the cats who would not approach a trap at all, or would just pee on it, would eventually go inside a carrier, then I'd stalk up behind and slam the door, then latch, then drape). Like fools, we did. This dying cat, turns out she was in end stage FeLV, extremely bad shape, comes out of that carrier like a tornado. Tech leaves room. To her credit, my housemate stayed in the room. The kitty proceeds to popcorn from floor to ceiling, repeatedly. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! etc. Almost can't visually track her motions. Hard to imagine she's actually expending that much energy.

I didn't know what to do, so I asked her to please go in the carrier. She did. I closed carrier; they tested her, very hot positive, lots of signs consistent with the end of FeLV. We euthanized her, put the carrier in their induction chamber.

Over the years, I've had two true ferals as eventual-pet cats. Girl E. Girl, even when dying 12 years later of hyperthyroidism, could still scratch you without your being able to clearly see her paw move. My vet in Pasadena used to call her "Zorro" -- you'd feel air move, then see the scratches welling up, wouldn't see the paw. Very intelligent and loving cat.

I've heard a lot of people say "cats who are 2nd generation feral, are totally feral". In my experience, this isn't true, and I've dealt with some huge, vicious environment, huge numbers, lasting for years colonies. And the other side of this aspect is, some of the most hard stray cats I've dealt with, we found trustworthy evidence that they had been pets who'd been abandoned, then had gone through very difficult times.

"But I really believe that most of the cats I trapped for the feral clinic were in fact either abandoned--they had once been pets (of a sort) or the kittens of abandoned moms"

This is, I believe, mostly how it goes.

However, I don't believe there is a "genetic component" to "tameness". There is temperament, there is conditioning/ training in an environment. There are definitely wild species -- and "wild" is an entirely different planet than "true feral".

I think that the interaction between innate temperament, and how much trauma the cat undergoes, is what determines how friendly/hostile/terrified the cat will be around people. Many people don't understand trauma/abuse (one of my buttons is people calling every cat "abused" -- they wouldn't say that if they saw a truly "purposefully abused" cat). A gang across the street from me in Pasadena had a litter of 5 -- I offered to take some, no, they had homes, yeah, they'd get mom spayed. Right. Well they raised a bunch of horribly trained dogs, then got kicked out by the city. 3 kittens, by now 7 months old, were left (I believe the other 2 died). One I never caught (the female). The other 2, who had started out as totally tame kittens, were at 7 months, acting like what people call "feral" -- I would now call them hard strays.

I caught one at 7 months, the other at 11 months. They started out confinement-taming in my bathroom, but then some other rescue showed up who needed that more than they did (this is why I ended up keeping them, as my vet said "they were too wild to adopt out", a phrase they love to hear). Sugie is after 10 years, letting us carefully pick him up. Grey Otter died in January, just at ten years (had IBD for years, complicated). But they appeared, and stayed, much more difficult to handle, than many nth generation feral cats I've dealt with.

The reason I'm trying to spread the use of my term "hard stray", and "true feral-which is fairly rare", and the idea of a spectrum of socialization, is to avoid the black/white no consideration of individual cases: feral = bad, tame = good. The term feral becomes like saying, OK, you can kill these cats and no one will care.

More intelligent cats will present at shelters as pretty wild (I know any of my personal cats would be considered "feral" at our local shelters, which are terrible at assessing cats). That's one reason why people try to get siamese mixes out of shelters -- since they're so intelligent, and perceptive, they can act pretty freaked out, even if they're pets.

Another thing people don't tend to think about is, what I call plateauing. Socialization, of people or cats, isn't a straight line. You go along for a while, seems like nothing is changing.......the battered woman still acts the same, the kid is still acting out, the cat still goes ballistic when you approach. But then one day, , something happens, now it's different -- can be up or down, more or less tame.

The most dramatic case of this was a tuxedo, I was cage taming her in a 2x2x3' cage. The cage was up on top of a condo cage. I opened the door, doing all the "don't worry kitty" protocols (turned sideways to her, head averted, not tense, curled hands not straight fingers, eyes mild and relaxed, don't make direct eye contact, can do the eye blink game, soft affect, etc.). Suddenly she was leaping out in the air, towards me. I thought oh rats I've made some mistake, and prepared to be in scratch city. But what she was doing was bounding into my arms, she buried her head under my chin and threw her paws around my neck. Ooooof! Then she tremulously started a motor purr. After that, she stayed quite tame. Good old Charcoal, got adopted out. What I'm trying for is maybe more precision in what we call these cats. I've heard so many people say "I caught a real serious feral, it took me a week before she'd let me touch her". That's not very hard stray! Or, "I had to let her go, she was so wild, she'd never be happy inside". We've brought over the years, hundreds of cats from "wildness" to inside (and done tons of TNR too) -- virtually all of them, even the 12+ year old ferocious tomcat, if started out in a small space (a cage or a room), then worked with on taming, adjusted to being inside. Grey Mama sits at the big windows when it rains, and she purrs and purrs, 6 years after being caught.

To me, these days, "feral" has become pretty meaningless. As people become more experienced at rescue, TNR, taming, etc., they become less likely to call them feral, they notice more things about the cats' behavior. To some people, a cat is "feral" if it won't do everything the person wants it to. Some are so afraid of the cats that the cats will hit them first.

Anyhow, please consider this spectrum, and the terms hard stray, true feral, traumatized stray, etc. Any behavior can be arrived at by many paths (a cat may be snarling and popcorning in a cage because people used to shut it in a carrier and let the dogs bat the carrier around, or because its owner used to shut it in a room when she left for a week with no cat sitter, or because she's a hard stray, or because she's in pain/injured, etc.). So when you observe X behavior, you don't just apply one word to it -- you consider, how did the kitty get up that mountain, what path did it take.

Gesine Lohr
GesineLohr@excite.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/feral_cats

Copyright © 2003 Gesine Lohr

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