SnagglePuss is approximately 12-13 years old with no known health issues. She is spayed and vacincated and continues to care for her family; JR, PacMan, Puggy, and Patches.
I mentioned in previous notes that the day I was bringing Buffy home from being spayed, I received a call that a cat and some kittens had been thrown from a moving vehicle. PugNose (Puggy) was one of the kittens and SnagglePuss was Mommy. We call SnagglePuss Snaggs or Snaggles because half of her right fang is broken off. We believe the tooth was broken off when she was tossed from the vehicle. We’ve had the tooth checked by a veterinarian multiple times with concerns that it may need to be pulled, but we are told it is not causing her problems or pain.
We tried to round up the kittens over the next few days following their abandonment, so they wouldn’t freeze in the snow. I though only kittens had been tossed out, but my husband said he kept seeing an adult cat darting in and out of a nearby culvert. I never saw her close, but from a distance in the dark I could see the shadow of a larger cat appearing to be attempting to round up kittens. I didn’t worry very much about the adult cat, because I knew that she would follow her kittens if we were able to rescue them. She did exactly that and before we knew it, she was camping on our front porch in the heated crate with her weaned kittens.
Snaggs was especially attached to her kittens, and especially to Puggy. Puggy was just as attached to her. Where momma went, Puggy went and they were pretty inseparable. In fact, Snaggs was so attached and protective of her kittens that she wouldn’t let Tiger near them. She would chase him off if he so much as dared to approach one of her babies. One day she came around the corner of the house and Tiger was interacting with one of the babies. She immediately attached and chased Tiger off. He ran as fast as he could through the woods and was never seen again.
We figured the kittens were 4 to 5 months old and knew there would be more kittens if the cats were not spayed and neutered. Even though we began keeping the girls in a separate crate from the boys at night, when we took Snaggs and Puggy to be spayed, we discovered afterwards that both had been pregnant. We had the boys neutered soon after their spay.
We began “gentling” all of them. There were 2 girls and 3 boys total. We didn’t know what we were going to do with them. They all were very skittish of people and darted away from human touch so it was unlikely they would be suitable as indoor pets.
We began to crate them at night to protect them from coyote, fox, and owls. They were allowed to exercise in the yard by day. Soon we purchased a covered 8 x 4 x 6 dog pen and created sterlite straw shelters which we put in the pen. Equipped with a litter box, food and bedding, that’s where we would house them at night, along with Jackson and Travis who were also very young.
We did this for a long time before eventually purchasing an 8 x 10 building to help provide better shelter for them. When we purchased the building, we added heat and air, built a platform to set the dog pen on and attached that to one of the windows so the cats could have more room and be able to go outside safely. Still there was not enough room to house them 24/7 and so they have continued to be allowed outside during the day for exercise.