I don't know where Mama Cat came from, but I started feeding her right after we lost our Greta Dog in 2003. She stayed pretty feral, had a litter in 2004 that I barely saw. But in 2005 decided to have her babies in our backyard. That's when we decided we needed to get a trap and start the neutering. We've probably neutered twenty cats over the years - mostly boys and they for the most part haven't stayed around after.

Our population has leveled out in the last few years to five - 3 girls, two boys. Two of the girls are from Mama Cat's last litter. I don't know where the third girl came from. She's the only one I can't pick up now.

We decided all we were going to do was neuter, release and feed and water, especially since for a while they kept disappearing. Curly Kitten was an exception. Although I think that if something happened to any of my friendly four now, I'd probably take them in if I could get them into a carrier.

We never thought about looking for homes because for the girls it took years to get them to let me handle them. We lost Mama back in December and she was finally letting me touch her. Sometimes I wish we had tried to place the Curlys - but I'd have missed out on their antics in my backyard. Curly in particular is quite friendly - he loves his belly rubs!

Our two indoor babies aren't allowed to socialize with the outdoor ones. Cassie is content with that. Tucker would like to go out and play and sometimes escapes. Because of the potential contact with the ferals, our indoor cats get vaccinated as if they went outside.

We've been lucky in that we haven't had a flea issue with Cassie and Tucker. Tucker had worms once after a lengthy escape and play session with Curly Kitten. I know that means he ingested a flea - but otherwise we haven't seen any.

We're in CA and it almost never freezes so I don't have winter issues. Our backyard is fenced so that keeps them relatively safe from the coyotes. We're on a dead end street with little traffic and back onto open space. I do end up also feeding skunks, raccoons and the occasional opossum. Part of me would like to be the crazy cat lady who takes them ALL in... but it's not practical. There are days when Cassie and Tucker don't get as much play time as they'd like. So I do what I can.

Veronica