A feral kitten running loose in the house, or even one room, has very little desire to interact with the scare person, so you do need to practice a little tough love and limit their space. You want them to be able to feel like they can get away from you if they feel overwhelmed, but not be able to get where you can not find them or get your hands on them. So most people who socialize feral kittens start off with them crated in a medium or large dog crate. How long they stay in the crate varies between foster homes and depending on how "bad" the litter is to start. I usually keep mine crated until I feel like I can approach them to pick them up without them trying to bite or totally freak out.
Crating feral kittens actually works well from a socialization standpoint and a safety standpoint. The one draw back being - the crate has to be cleaned. Now any shelter volunteer and many foster families are familiar with the concept of cleaning a crate or cage. You scoop or change the litter box, give them fresh bowls for food/water and replace any dirty linens with clean ones every day. That brings me to the title of this post - How Dirty isToo Dirty? It doesn't seem like there should be degrees of dirtiness. Something is either clean or dirty. But as most feral socialization foster people (and many teenagers) will tell you, sometimes things are clean enough.
You may remember from my previous post that any change in the environment can make a feral kitten nervous and cause a set back in socialization. This includes cleaning their cage. It can take a feral kitten a few days to get used to the sights and smells of their crate, so just imagine what sort of stress it causes them to have you constantly changing what is in their crate.
So I will let you in on a secret that will probably appall a lot of typical foster moms. I do not clean my ferals cage every day. Yup, I said it. Don't get me wrong, they get fresh water and food, sometimes multiple times a day. But in the same dishes. I scoop their box when it is messy but keep that same box unless it gets really gross. If that happens I wash it and put the same one back in with them rather than using a new one. And their blankets? No. They do not get new ones everyday. In fact, I only replace their blankets if there is dirty litter or water or wet food spilled on it. If they kick clean litter or dry food onto the blanket, I scoop it off the and leave the blanket in there.
Why do I have these lousy housekeeping skills? Am I just lazy? A neglectful foster mom? Nope. I will tell you why. Cats in general, but feral kittens especially operate by scent. It takes a day or two for their scent to get on their blankets and bowls. When they are surrounded by their scent, they have claimed their territory and feel more calm. If I am constantly changing their blankets out every day, they never get that chance to "settle in" and relax. To me, a little clean litter dust or a few kernels of dry food on the blanket is a small price to pay for that relaxation. There is also the more practical reason of feral kittens do not like you in their cage, get nervous when you are cleaning and are more likely to bite during cleaning than any other time other than vet care.
Today my girls' cage was a mess. It had to be totally stripped bare and set up again. It happens. So you are faced with a trashed cage and scared feral kittens. What now? Well it depends on how feral the kittens are. If you know you can safely scruff them and move them, get a carrier and transfer them to the carrier. Put the carrier on top of the crate (most cats feel more secure up high and you will be moving around a lot on the floor to get supplies which will likely to freak them out. You are very big compared to them).
Slowly strip the cage, set it up again and transfer the kittens back. Ideally, there will be a small extra blanket or bed from the "dirty" crate that is clean enough to put in the newly cleaned one to transfer their smell back, but today, I had to start from scratch. Do not try to interact with your ferals right after you cleaned their cage, they are too nervous. Make sure you put some food or treats in the cage before you move them back and walk away. Give them a few hours to settle back in before approaching again.
What do you do if they are too feral to move to a carrier with out concern of being bitten? If they are too feral to move out of the crate you are going to have to clean around them, which can be dangerous. Well here is where some planning ahead comes in handy. You will usually know they are that bad the day you bring them home. When you first set up their cage, rather than placing one blanket or towel on the bottom of the crate, put three or four. It gives them a nice comfy place to rest and makes it so that if the top blanket does get too dirty to leave in the cage, rather than having to pull it out and them get a new blanket in and spread out underneath the freaking out kittens, you just pull the top one off to reveal the clean on underneath. (This also works for social kittens with diarrhea by the way). The less disturbance to the cage means calmer kittens and less chance of getting bitten. Pull the litter box and food dishes out of the cage to scoop and fill then put them all back in at once. Again, the less you are reaching in and out of the cage the better.
In general, all of us foster moms want our babies to have the best, most comfortable, most pristine living environment at all times. But you might need to suppress those over active foster mom hormones for your feral babies. Unless the kittens are sick or dealing with a heavy parasite load, a little dirt won't kill them. But reducing the level of stress they experience could mean the difference between living the life of a pampered house cat or having to be placed in a barn or feral colony.
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