Feral Male Cats Question

Do they show their male offspring "the ropes"?

We have a thriving feral population. We trap, neuter and release. Mostly we just have our neutered girl kitties hanging around. But we get the occasional male wandering through. A couple years ago a male came into the yard with what turned out to be a male kitten. We trapped them both. I sometimes see the adult, but haven't seen the kitten since.

Now I have another male pair in my yard. The adult male is a big orange guy with a curl in his tail. Thus his name is Curly. Curly is reasonably friendly and likes to be petted. There will be food outside and he'll sit at the French doors meowing at me. He disappeared from our yard last year when a big black tom started appearing. The black guy never came for food, so we couldn't trap him. Now he's disappeared and Curly is back - with Curly Kitten. The kitten looks just like him and is definitely male. The first few days they always seemed to come together to the yard. Now Curly Kitten is more on his own. I have never seen Curly Kitten's mother or any other kittens. I'd guess he's 3 to 6 months old.

We had the trap out last weekend, but couldn't catch either. We'll try again this weekend.

Veronica

I don't know, but it's a pretty interesting situation.

I have two (neutered) male cats that have access to the outside. They tolerate each other fine, even though one of them was a stray we took in. There is a feral cat colony at a city facility nearby, and we have all kinds of cats outside of the yard. The one stray of mine goes out and fights with them, but it is often a different male over a period of months at a time. There is one cat who I have caught on the porch, peeking in the doggie door, that is not afraid of my dogs who can come out and get it at any time. (My dogs are cowed by cats, pretty much, but the cat doesn't know that.) The cats come and go with no rhyme or reason, interacting, or not, with my cats.

Since one particular male cat started coming around again, my original cat that we moved here with, rarely goes outside at all. He's just not a fighter, I guess. But the territorial things that go on with the feral cats is fascinating.

How they work it all out is beyond me!

Karen

I don't think feral male cats have much to do with their offspring. I do know that if they move in on another male cat and defeat him, they will kill all the kittens so they can start their own family. Kind of like lions do. All the young of the other male are killed.
I used to live near a guy who had a lot of feral cats around his place. If they came down to my property my dogs would kill them, but periodically coyotes would wipe out most of them, and they'd start accumulating again. As the population got larger and larger, you'd start to see crooked tails, short tails, or no tails, Iguess from all the inbreeding. Then the coyotes would wipe them out. Sort of a natural cycle I guess.
vickie