A RESCUE GLOSSARY

A Rescue Glossary of terms we use, including some made up by Gesine and others 4/5/2003

TNR	Trap Neuter Return, the best method to stabilize colonies
S/N or s/n	Spay Neuter
Hard Stray	A term coined by Gesine, see About starting rescue, spectrum of socialization. Hard stray means what is commonly called "feral". I believe "hard strays" are mostly what we encounter, and there are "true ferals" who are quite qualitatively different.
Speuter	a contraction of spay/neuter
Nerf bat	What Gesine will bop people with when trying to encourage them
Scrubbie dubbie	Gesine's term for playing banjo on a kib's belly, often done while saying "Abraham is an nth generatio ferro"
Pharoah/ferro	Gesine silly talk for feral
PTS	a term I don't like to use as it is a euphemism, "put to sleep" for killing, euthanizing
KFC	Kentucky Fried Chicken, excellent trap bait (remove bones and skin)
Kib	affectionate term for a kitten or cat
Bubbie	affectionate term for a sibling, "she bopped her bubbie because, well, she's her bubbie"
House feral	cat who is very skittish inside, usually this results from not confining the cat while taming (i.e. letting a not tame cat have the run of the house)
List as found	where there is a shelter/public facility that one CAN list cats as found (w/o having to relinquish them), we should list any cat rescued, as found (even if we think they're hard strays)
Spectrum of socialization	Gesine's messy spectrum where a cat can be in any place on it, rather than just "feral" or "tame" Many roads up the mountain = there are many experiential ways a cat can end up presenting as "wild" -- lack of human contact, terrible human contact, abandonment, neglect, purposeful abuse
PTSD	Post traumatic stress disorder (or syndrome) -- what critters, cats and people and all, experience after serious stress and/or traumatic events
The Cat Nation	when thinking of "the good of the Cat Nation" as opposed to "the good of this Individual Cat". Sometimes both goals are alligned, sometimes not. E.g., if you TNR a cat who is persistently FeLV+, rather than killing them (if hard stray), that is good for the Individual Cat but bad for The Cat Nation (since many other cats will be infected by this cat -- thus "net death number" will be higher).
Pusscha song	Lullaby like song, Gesine sings to cats-in-taming. Cats really love ritual.
Cage taming	Putting a cat or kit in a 2x2x3' cage, to tame them. Cage taming is much faster/easier on the cat, than not confining them for taming.
Lair	place cats can hide, have as safe place. Cats are lair animals, and many hard stray colony cats are quite fearful of open spaces.
Up-generation	"upstream" generation-wise, i.e. "the grandma cat is up-generation from this latest litter"
FeLV	Feline leukemia virus
FIV	Feline immunodeficiency virus
Ear tip	cutting the tip off of one ear, to indicate this cat has been TNRd
Ear notch	less effective than ear tip, indicates has been TNRd. Harder to tell from a random rip in ear
UTI	urinary tract infection
URI	upper respiratory infection
neonatal	kitten 3 weeks of age and under
Eye game	when one party glances softly at other, blinks slowly, looks away, then repeats -- this means "I won't attack you"
Feeder	someone who just feeds a colony of cats without TNRing them -- this is not a complimentary term -- we need to convince/educate feeders to "if you feed a stray, spay a stray" -- in terms of The Cat Nation, killing the couple of original cats might result in net 5 deaths, but if you become a feeder w/o TNRing, the colony will get up to say 25 and then, potentially, there will be many MORE cat deaths. So to just feed is NOT a kindness.
Cat gardening, cat gardener	A great term coined by Susan Greene -- doing cat gardening is when you're handling your colony as if it were, la ti dah, your garden -- oh, we'll TNR a couple here and there....while kittens are being born -- and never getting the colony managed, which is very unfortunate for the colony.
Hoarder	person w/psychological disorder, hoards cats -- this is NOT the same as someone who has a lot of cats -- Hoarders typically don't know how many they have, don't do s/n, may have dead cats in the house, and if you remove all their cats, typically will just repeat the cycle. We need to make it plain that people who do cat rescue and have many cats, are not the same as hoarders.
Sanctuarying cats	Giving cats a lifetime-if-necessary home with you, typically with cats who are hard to adopt out (for medical, socialization, or other reasons).
Quantum tunneling to Cleveland	Used to sit in physics lectures, and when we were doing quantum physics they'd be telling us, well, in theory, ANYTHING could suddenly "quantum tunnel" somewhere. Might be a little bitty particle, or might be YOU, or a cat.....So we started saying that we'd missed so and so since at the time we'd quantum tunneled to Cleveland. (I'm way out of date on quantum physics stuff, but I think it's still considered literally possible....) So one day I mentioned this on this list, and Vanessa pipes up, oh, I WONDERED where all those stray cats were coming from, apparently they quantum tunneled to Cleveland, from elsewhere. The universe is certainly much stranger than we can comprehend!
"Too Wild To Adopt Out"	What Gesine's Grey Otter was. Cats you dearly love and don't want to adopt out even though sometimes you probably should, so you emphasize how they are TWTAO (my great vet in LA is the one who first called him "too wild to adopt out"). (Grey Otter would like the record to state that he actually WAS TWTAO).

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

Copyright © 2003 Gesine Lohr

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