Arboreal Ferals?

Has anyone else experienced their feral colony taking to the trees?

My colony's feeding station is under a thick bramble bush which is sheltered by a healthy fir tree that extends up 35-40 feet in the air. It's at the edge of an industrial campus parking dotted with lots of much smaller (though currently heavily foiliaged) liquid amber trees which average 12-25 feet tall.

I have arrived recently to find cats inhabiting *seriously* astonishing high levels of the fir tree, heights from which they seem to descend fairly well; not as agile as squirrels, but still doing much better than I would have thought.

I witnessed at least one fight involving three cats in the branches of one of the nearby liquid amber trees, and I have personally seen cats coming down out of the liquid amber trees to feed at the station when I come (usually at or just after dusk).

These ferals are rarely if ever seen by the workers in the daytime. Is it possible that they are living in the trees? This cannot be a good thing for birds, if so. Still, what a great hiding place for the cats. Who looks up into branches to see cats? Jeez, they never cease to amaze me, these animals.

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I wonder if it's possible that a non-tree-climbing predator has been making its presence known in the area lately? Any coyotes around?

Priscilla, who once saw one of her ferals in her pear tree

Well, there are coyotes around sometimes (at a library sale, I actually found and bought a book about coyotes to learn what I could do to protect the cats from them), but they've been there longer than my colony. In all the time I've been here, only one cat has been taken by coyotes that I know about.

I've been caring for this particular colony for ten years give-or-take, and the coyotes

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Fascinating. I'm stumped, too!

I have discovered that small kittens are very handy about climbing into bushes. I rescued one litter by plucking them out of the shrubbery like so much ripened fruit. Our favorite feral momcat may even have given birth in her favorite holly tree, though we could never confirm that. I remember one instance, where we found her hiding in the tree, staring down at us, and then watched her disappear from sight as we watched, just like the Cheshire Cat.

I would be willing to bet that coyotes have inspired your colony to take to the trees. Birds are probably not in great danger, unless they are nesting in the cats' favorite climbing spots. It's the fledglings that are mostly taken, and that when they are on the ground.

Sharon Talbert Friends of Campus Cats