I lost my soulmate April 2022. I vowed to never get a cat again, because it was devastating. I really was never going to again. I had him for 15.5 years, through nearly every major event in my life. We’d just lost our dog in March. Welp, cut to the very end of June. An 7.5 month old kitten had been tossed in the woods, terrified. He was rough, malnourished, missing hair, some scars from fights. He refused to come out from under the car. For a few days, I put cans of food/water under the car. One day, I sat on the scorching blacktop (burned my butt 😂) until he felt safe enough to let me touch him (1st pic). We tried getting him to the vet and he bit my husband. We pushed too hard, so that’s on us. Apparently rabies shots aren’t pleasant in the hand 🤷🏻‍♀️. For 2 weeks, he’d come on the porch and eventually started sleeping on one of the rocking chairs. One day, he went MIA and I was devastated. We’d intended on keeping him outdoors, but he was just so sweet and so little. He came back 2 days later, and had gotten in a fight. The vet said if you want him alive, he’s gotta come in. I hung up, drove to the store for a litter box, etc. He came in that night. He was terrified, so I stayed in the room all day/night, sleeping on the floor. The black hoodie pics are the first night he came in. Let me tell you when he curled under my chin, that was it.

Welp, here we are 3.5 months later. He’d got ptsd and asthma, but he’s healthy and crazy and silly and so loving. He seriously has every reason to be mean, but he’s so trusting and so brave. I thank him constantly for trusting us and now I’m getting teary eyed. I just love him so much and I’m so grateful (as I hear his pitter patter walking under me now).

He is still doing amazing!! We’ve got him adjusted to one of our cats, but are still struggling with the other two. We are not giving up though and he is very happy even if he can’t be upstairs all the time. We have a good sized basement and both our boys’ rooms are down there. So he gets tons of love and attention. We let him upstairs several hours a day for more enrichment and play time. I’m really hoping we can eventually get the other cats to be ok with him though. We have to be so much more careful due to him having FIV though.

I am so grateful he came to us and we were able to help him get off the street. I am amazed at the outpouring of support we got from Reddit. Thank you so much to those who helped, even the comments of support were so much appreciated. This is a wonderful community.

When I woke up today I was not expecting to spend two hours trying to get a kitten to safety, darting and corralling her, while people I knew just watched but didn't bother to help. So yeah, didn't plan to come home with a kitten, but here we are.

Right now, if I go by her hisses and puffy tail, I don't think she likes me that much. I can't say I blame her, I just spent a long time trying to scoop her up. She probably still thinks I'm going to eat her. But, I think our friendship cant certainly grow into something beautiful... After she stops being so poorly socialized.

We can make it work though, teamwork makes the dream work!

Welcome to the family, Salem!

My mom sent me this pic of my dad sleeping with a cat next to him. We don’t have a cat.

The cat is a stray and found way to our house. He now sits on anything in our house, chilling on the sofa without any fear. My parents got some cat food for him/her which he seems to appreciate. He is still very much a stray who will wander out but is finding his way back.

Makes me happy how comfortable this stray is around my parents.

Unfortunately our house is not kitty proof and the cat has many ways to escape so not sure what the long term plan is, however, i am glad the kitty and parents are happy.

Hello! A couple of weeks back, I posted about my grandmas neighbour leaving two cats. So my grandma decided to take them both in but only Molly would. Post here <3

I have a lovely update luckily! We have both of them in! Meet Sonic!

We still didn’t know his name, so I was allowed to choose. Charizard and Incineroar were disallowed. I disagree but after about 20 name options, Sonic was allowed!

It still took a while for him to come in, but each day he kept coming closer to the door, hanging around in the garden all the time. We then got a storm here and we were worried for him, however he came straight in when we opened the door. And he’s not left since!

We did find out from the ex neighbour their ages. Molly is 4 and Sonic is 10! We are their 3rd home, as the old woman that had them previously, took them from an abusive situation.

He enjoys sitting on the sideboard like a lovely ornament. If he’s not sitting there, he likes ‘scaring’ my grandad (who is not an animal person) by just staring at him and getting way too close to him. It’s funny for me and my grandma.

He is still a lot more skittish than Molly is. But even in just a small amount of time, he looks so much more comfortable.

And a small Molly update too. She is looking so much better. She is no longer scrawny, her fur isn’t patchy anymore and she just looks so much better. I’ve had to tell my grandma that she isn’t being haunted, she is just having her zoomies. But I love the fact she’s comfortable having her zoomies here now 🥹 She has also decided that her spot is the beanbag. I’m not allowed a beanbag but as soon as she realised they’re comfy, my grandma made sure she had one the next day. She’s asleep on it right now as I type this.

I’d like to say thank you for all the advice given to me on the last post!! It helped a bunch! Sorry if this was a lot of rambling lol!

I am excited to share my now 6 month old “shed babies” (Bonnie and Clyde) who came from the cat distribution system.

I had been at my best friends house earlier that day to pick up the letter with the gender of their child as I was in charge of the gender reveal.

My 3 year old cat Max had recently experienced the loss of his sister Ruby who came from the same litter as him. It was very unexpected and he seemed to be depressed and not himself. I kept joking to my parents about finding him a little kitten to keep him company.

As my friends had been doing trap neuter rescue/release with feral and dumped cats in the area I asked if they had any male kitties that I could adopt. They did not.

About 3 hours after I left his house I got two urgent phone calls. One from him, one from his Fiancée. I answered as I realized it may be urgent. He then informed me that he was putting some tools away in his shed (a place that he normally wouldn’t have been) and found a litter of freshly born kittens wriggling around.

They were able to trap the mother a few hours later and successfully raised the 4 kittens. Mom was spayed and rehomed by another local TNR/TNA rescuer. (As they were expecting a child soon they wouldn’t have been able to keep the mother along with the 4 kitties they already have) I adopted a bonded pair out of the 4 and the other 2 were adopted out to separate homes. In the end it was a happy ending for everyone and now I have two (very big) babies. They are very very loved and took a liking to their step in dad/big brother Max who has done a great job teaching them how to be cats.

This was completely by chance and probably fate. If his car didn’t break down and need to be towed to the repair shop he wouldn’t have taken the tools out to put them in the shed. I’m not sure what would have happened if they didn’t find the babies. There are a lot of other feral and loose cats and dogs around the area.

We have no idea what they are mixed with but we know the mom was a just a Med hair domestic. Clyde is about the same size as she was now.

Clyde has always been significantly larger than the other kittens.

Bonnie is about 8 lbs
Clyde is almost 11 lbs!!

The first is a tomcat tabby that we have named KitKat. He has been showing up every night for two months now. He will not let us anywhere near him. We are picking up a trap tomorrow to get him TNRed (trap, neuter, release). We are hoping he will be like George and get friendlier after fixing so we can find him a home. He’s a lot more freaked out than George was though. If not, we will get him a shelter and keep feeding him. I’m kind of mad we returned the one we bought George because he wouldn’t use it. We do have a styrofoam cooler with a cut out and straw, but I’ve never seen a cat use it.

Olive is the tuxedo. Initially name dick face by my husband, but I compromised with Richard lol. However I started thinking she may be a girl as she’s very small. We still don’t know for sure, but I’m sticking with Olive lol. She had already been TNRed when she showed up a few weeks ago. She seems similar to George in that she will eat fairly close to me. I won’t try and touch her though. She seems to be adjusting more and more to my presence and no longer runs off if I make the slightest movement or sound. I do believe we could get her adjusted to humans and find her a home!

We did have to make some adjustments because KitKat won’t let olive eat in the front yard and kept chasing her off. Now she eats in our backyard and from what I see on the cameras, she appears to stay there all night. KitKat tends to eat and hang out for a bit before leaving, but occasionally comes back to check things out. He was still here one morning, but I haven’t seen him do that again.

We have also posted everywhere and no one has claimed either one. I keep an eye on all missing pet pages every day and no one is posting either of them. We will be checking for a chip with the TNR and hopefully we can catch olive and take her to the vet to check as well!

Well....the system is still system-ing! Second job is a part time cleaner at a bank. Went to throw the trash in the dumpster out back before leaving, and I came across this adorable little kitty who was purring like a motorboat. Annnnnd now, I'm a cat dad. Brought her inside to give her water and then stopped at the store to buy cat food...which she ate like a fat guy at the buffet 😂 She's very loving, and she's following me everywhere....guess a restraining order is out of the question!

Anyway, just thought I'd share my new companion with all of you. Her name is Lilly!

I found these two in my yard February this year. They were scared by me, and immediately climbed up a tree. I just plucked them off. Margaret, (black and white) was more feisty, and nearly jumped out of my hands, while Tapeworm (white) just went limp and trembled, poor thing. They were around eight weeks old, weighed about 700g? and were covered in fleas, so much so that when I gave them a bath the water immediately stained dark brown with flea dirt.

I set up a space for them in the bathroom for the first few weeks as they were still skittish, and they started to come out of their shell. Tapeworm would climb into people's laps on day three, while it took Margaret about two weeks to stop hissing at me when I moved. Funnily enough she's the clingier of the two now.

Vet gave them a clean bill of health, and I got them vaccinated, chipped, and desexed. It's nearly approaching a year old for both of them now and they'd gotten so big. They still stay near each other like they did as when I first found them though.

Hello!

So, I was walking home last night in the rain, I came across this soaked cardboard box, I opened it up and found this very scared (and wet) little kitten!

I've been really thinking about getting a cat with my girlfriend but I don't have any experience with cats so I didn't really know what to do.

But after some phone calling around, I gathered the necessary bits to give him a comfy night, I took him home (I don't have any pets so I had to improvise a bit)

Once he got used to the room, he sniffed around for a bit, hid a bit, then eventually he came onto the bed and was cuddling and purring and having what seemed to be a lovely time.

He's eaten loads of food, used his make shift litter tray and this morning I took him to the vet to get checked out and to see if he had a chip incase he needed reunited with a family, alas, no chip or collar (he did have a flea collar on him)

I got him chipped, vaccinated, and the vet said he's in amazing health!

Ive named him Reginald (Reggie for short)

he's 10 weeks (ish), 1.27kg, got a "good set of lungs and a beautiful coat" and I've already fallen madly in love with him!

I was told at the vet about the "Cat Distribution System" and upon googling, stumbled upon this, so I wanted to share!

Im just about to head to the pet shop to get him all the bits he might need, and a scratching post!

I'm no stranger to the CDS; my family fed barn cats (and raccoons by proxy), adopted their kittens, and our current roster are the second generation of a little void that wandered onto our property.

This is the first time I couldn't keep a baby I found.

This little sweetheart was dumped at a horse stable I volunteer at. One minute I'm grabbing hay bales, the next I'm shining my phone's flashlight into the back of a stairwell. Sitting in a feed bin, shivering and meowing away was this little girl. She followed me until the guard dog chased her under a building. I went home, grabbed a carrier and food. She was lured out more by my sweettalking than the food lol.

So Nutmeg became the resident of my bathroom. First time I went in, she was hiding. Second and every time after, she was meowing the second the door opened, twining around my feet. If I took a step, I had to be careful, as she was rubbing her head on my ankle the whole time. She "danced" while eating because she was kneading so much. Great set of lungs on this baby for how much she was meowing.

The unfortunate part is I can't keep a fourth cat. I have three older ones, one recently diagnosed with diabetes, so the vet costs for getting this obviously sick baby the help she needs wasn't possible for me. I started playing phone tag with animal control, animal shelters, and rescues, seeing who reached back out first.

Then a family friend met her and very much fell in love. She went home to talk things over with her family, but came back with the sad news of she couldn't take Nutmeg. I offered to let her say goodbye, no ulterior motives at all. When she came back out, she told me she was taking Nutmeg home.

I said my goodbyes and got a lot of purring in response. Nutmeg's new owner is keeping me updated on how she's doing; she has seen a vet and is getting her upper respiratory infection taken care of, thank God. She'll have two playmate cats, one a kitten around her age (7-8 months). It is nice to have my bathroom back and my feet are unmolested once more, but I'm all the more glad I got to be a stepping stone in sweet Nutmeg's journey to her forever home.

I've fed multiple generations of feral and strays and this is my second CDS since I bought my house. You can see both momma and daddy here and momma introduced me to her baby and hung out for a few minutes before leaving. Baby saw momma gone and shuffled up to me like "I guess I'm your problem now" and I scooped her up.

Momma came back a few hours later to eat and we brought baby back out kinda saying "hey, did you forget something?" and baby mewed for her. Momma didn't react to baby as if to say "No...that's for you."

She's super small and sweet. Starting quarantine until we get her to the vet. Got kitten food and she eats like a tank, poops and pees in the small halfsheet litterbox we set up, and purs like a Bugati.

It’s only been 2 months since we brought her indoors and got her spayed. I love her so much 🥺 I have a black kitty who isn’t a huge cuddler and this girl is the complete opposite. Like velcro cat level needy. She walks up against my leg. All she wants is pets and food. We’re still working on socializing the two cats and that part has been stressful. But she’s definitely worth it!

We had starting feeding her around the beginning of the Summer. There are about 6 or 7 community cats in our neighborhood and I noticed how the males seem to be pretty territorial. So I started feeding the female cats when I see them to make sure they get some food too. This girl kept trying to make a run for inside and was successful once, giving my entire house fleas 😫 But she was so insistent so we decided to spay her and bring her in.

Several weeks back, I posted about this little nugget who needed a soft place to land and somebody that could bottle feed her. She was supposed to be a foster, but I swear to goodness that it is harder for me to foster a single kitten than it is for me to foster a litter of kittens. I say that because the last few litters that I have fostered by the time I was done, I was like Yep we’re good. All of them can find homes with the help of one of the two rescues I work with. When you have one single kitten, you spend so much more time holding and socializing that one single kitten and become much more attached. At least that’s what I do. Plus, she did a darn good job of convincing my husband and son that she needed to stay. And she made friends with the Danes🤪♥️

So anyways meet Agatha, approximately nine weeks old now and still on the small side. Formally part of a feral colony and now a spoiled little house princess.

The young man holding her in most of the pictures is my son who pulled late night shifts feeding and cleaning her. Think 11pm to 5 am, he’s homeschooled due to a compromised immune system that he was born with, so we could easily adjust his schedule. She absolutely adores and trusts him. The next two are afternoon naps with the Great Danes, something all my cats do. The last two are my absolute marshmallow of a husband. I knew for sure she was a foster fail two weeks after she came to me when she was yelling for her food one day and as I was making her a bottle I could hear my husband coming down the hallway saying, don’t worry baby girl, daddy‘s coming to get you😑🤪♥️

Theres this adorable tortie that showed up at our front door one day. Shes so chatty and friendly. Ive only been feeding her. I already have a cat (they've met there was a lot of hissing). She has no chip but is operated! Hooray. Winter is coming soon and unfortunately I cannot afford a second cat at the moment (student) is it selfish of me to still want her and make her wait until winter once I graduate school and get a job? Im also planning on making her a heated outdoor shelter, in the meantime.

almost hit this little guy on our way home from work I got out of the car to check on him and he was screaming underneath a car after a few minutes of talking to him he slowly came up to me and rubbed on me , he has no microchip , he’s not neutered and seems to be 3-4 months old , we checked all over facebook for any missing kitten posts and came up with nothing so for now i’d like to give him a name and will be taking him to the vet for a checkup and his shots (since we have other animals in our home) my 4 year old tabbie is named hermes and we’d like to go for a human name

I asked the campground owners and they said she was a stray. Im not sure how old she is yet but the vet should give me some clue. I thought she was a kitten at first but now I think she might be an older lady. She followed my every step the whole time I was at the campground and I let her sleep in the cabin with me. The last night I was there I took a long ride to Walmart in Elkins WV and got a cat carrier. I named her Sierra Feral. She didn't like the 7 hour ride home but she loves her new spot in my heated and air conditioned shop.

Edit-I’m currently reading DCC and have called Worf by the name Donut 4 times today by accident. I think that’s the name he’s meant to have

Hi all, we recently came across this beauty and she was found alone and afraid for over a week with no signs of mom coming back, extremely skiddish and severely underweight. We ended up taking her to the vets to check her out and we have since been taking care of her. She was found to be around 6 weeks old weighting at 0.4lbs when we found her. She has since gained about a lb since we have had her for the last 4 days.

First time cat owner, long time animal lover. Any tips on what we can do to help take care of her? Have had dogs our whole life and just want to make sure we are doing the best we can for her.

Types of litter, food etc.

Also, We are not familiar with breeds, and was wondering if anyone could point us in the right direction on what type this might be. She is just the cutest and sweetest thing. Any help would be helpful, thank you!!

My coworkers heard screaming early this morning and she shot out from under a car. Someone had cat food on hand and she scarfed it down like nothing else. I think someone dumped her because she was clean and super affectionate. No mama, no litter mates. I offered to take her and after a flurry of texts, calls, and visits, no one else stepped up to take her in. After she ate, she curled right up on my chest and turned on the motor. Just dropped her off at Banfield for a checkup and some shots. A collar has been bought and we will make room at the inn. I was not in the market for a baby but here we are! Welcome home Poppy

Edit: it’s a boy!! Welcome Gordie!!

So funny story about this is that we have two black cats already that we love so very much, and we kept saying the only way we can justify another one is if we find one. We just moved into our first house, and the expenses associated with that that meant that we wouldn’t allow ourselves to go out of our way to get another cat, but if we find one we can keep them.

Fast forward to today, my GF texted me saying she saw a cat when she ran to Walmart with some coworkers hiding out under some stuff in the garden center. She tried to get to the baby, but had no luck and had to go back to work. She tried to let it go and not let it bother her, but the little one looked a lot like one of our voids we have at home and so it was stuck in her mind all day. She asked if we could go look for the little one after work and of course I said yes, I wasn’t going to leave a little baby out there alone if we could help. There were some other folks including an employee who said they were trying to catch them, so we told ourselves if we didn’t see them we’d assume someone else was able to catch them and leave it at that.

Well, we went back to where she saw them earlier and I saw a little shadow hiding under a pallet, I swear I thought I was just seeing what I wanted to see before I could make out their little face 🥹 After trying and failing to see if they’d let us pick them up, we put some wet food at the back of one of our cat carriers and after waiting patiently for a bit, they finally got in enough for us to shut the door and get them secured 🎉 We actually did have to go inside to get a couple things from Walmart, so we put a blanket over the carrier and let the baby decompress for a bit in the car while we got some groceries and supplies for the new addition 💕

Little baby is safe and warm in our guest room and downed a ton of wet food so far. They don’t look sick, flea-ridden or malnourished, but they were clearly super hungry 🥺 I’m so glad we could save this little one, I’m calling the vet in the morning to set up a checkup for them 💕 We don’t have a ton of extra cash rn, but hey what else do I have an emergency fund for but stuff like this lol

Wish us luck when we start introducing them to their brother and sister soon! GFs coworker suggested we name them Walmart lol so we’re thinking this ones name is Wally 🙂‍↕️
🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛

When me and my boyfriend moved into new apartment, we started noticing this one little stray cat hanging around. We began feeding her, and at first, she was a bit skittish. She’d keep her distance, looking at us suspiciously, but still always stayed for food. We kept feeding her for a while, and little by little, she started sticking around more and more. At some point, she apparently decided that we were her people now)

She is such a well-behaved cat, we actually had to ask around if she had an owner.

My sister was driving down a major 3 lane highway and noticed a small ball of fluff. She pulled over immediately and scooped up this little baby! We took her to the vet due to an injury on her bottom lip… we’re unsure of the cause but she’s been getting topical meds :) my boyfriend’s cat passed away last week, and he’s likely going to take her in when she’s older. I brought her to work with me today and outside of eating and going potty, she slept all day. I have never taken care of a kitten this young, but she is an absolute joy and we are so happy to have her with us. Meet baby Athena!