What a wonderful thing you are doing

I often socialize feral kittens - if you ever need specific advice/info, feel free to email me
olyagrove gmail com

How do you win their trust? I've never had a kitten this young before much less a feral one.

Patience, persistence and lots of wet food...
The younger the kitten, the easier to socialize him

Spend a lot of time around him...if you have a minute, sit in the are he is in - and do your activities there (read a newspaper, etc) Even better, have him around the high traffic area - we try to socialize in rooms where we spend the most time

Hold him a lot. He might hate it first and struggle - you might need to wrap him up in a towel...but he will get use to it
As you hold him, offer him wet food from your hands. It helps a lot to get the kitten to eat from your hands. If he refuses, get some sourcream and put it on his nose. He will start licking it. Once he gets a taste of it - kitties love sour cream - offer some from your finger. Kittens learn to trust when they eat from your hands and lick your fingers

Play with him..he might be shy at first, but being a kitten, he wont resist a string dangled in front of him for long...This teaches them not to be scared of your hands moving around...as you play, touch him sometimes or pick him up and put him back, so he can continue playing, even if he freaks out for a moment from being picked up...

Good luck! The kitten is so young, he should socialize no problem
Please make sure he is dewormed - roundworms are common in feral kitties and can make the cat sick/die, if not treated...

Olya

He is adorable! Olya, your advice is very good. We've socialized a couple feral kittens and used exactly the tactics you recommend. Once I sat on the floor in a storage room for hours every day for 5 days reading the paper, talking out loud and flipping a string toy around. Finally the wild kitten came out from her hiding place on the 5th day and started watching me. Within an hour she was playing with the string and getting close - even running over my lap to chase the string. I fed her from my fingers and within 3 more days she was curled up sleeping on my lap. I had her for 17 years and she was the most loving cat I ever had.

kate

Thanks for all the advice! So far I've been able to catch him a couple times and sit him on my lap while I petted him. The first time I had a hard time catching him and ended up using a butterfly net. Quite understandably he was pretty tense and kept looking at my like he thought I was going to eat him or something! The second time he was much easier to catch, I just reached under the broken flower pot he was curled up under and scooped him up. That time I risked getting bit again and took off my gloves to pet him. He was much more relaxed and even purred while I scratched behind his ears and pet him. He stayed on my lap for about 15 minutes before slinking off to hide. Now that I'm pretty sure he won't bite me again I'll try feeding him some food from my finger to get him more comfortable being around me. I've tried to get him to play with a string but all he did was stare at it. He's so very thin that I don't think he has the energy to play right now. I can feel every one of his ribs and vertebrae and his hip and shoulder bones stand out prominetly. Hopefully as he puts on some weight he'll be more energetic.

Once I can get him checked out by a vet I hope to be able to bring him inside the house to cuddle him while I'm watching TV. I just don't want to do so before he gets a clean bill of health since I already have two indoor cats. I'm also concerned about how they will react to having a kitten in the house. Right now they are able to watch him from a couple different windows and the french door any time they want. So far they seem more interested in watching the kitten's food dish instead of him.

You are making great progress, if he is purring!!

Once he is healthy and if your other kitties are friendly, it will also help him be around friendly kitties...as he will learn from their behavior :)

Good luck!!

Fang is doing great! Even though I still have to hunt around the back porch to find and catch him he's tuning out to be a real cuddler. Once I'm able to pick him up he almost immediatly starts purring and cuddling up to my neck. I take him inside and pet him while I watch TV or read a book. The entire time he's with me he purrs loudly and learns into my hand while I scratch his head and neck. Sometimes he looks like he's going to pass out from sheer bliss when I scratch between his shoulders. Fang's finally filling out and now looks like a healthy kitten instead of a walking skeleton. He likes to have his belly rubbed and will even play with my hand sometimes.

My two indoor cats still aren't quite sure they like having another cat in their territoy although I think Fang would love to make friends with them. The youngest, Koneko, will sit next to my chair and stare at Fang with wide eyes and slightly tilted ears. From time to time she'll stand on her hind legs to sniff at him and nuzzle her nose into his ear. Then she promply hisses in his face, sits back down and resumes staring. Fang doesn't seem to know what to do about the mixed signals she's giving him.

Khyssa, my other cat is even less thrilled with him. The couple of times I've let Fang down in the living room he's tried to go over to her. Both times she's sniffed at him, hissed, and then stalked off to watch him from a distance.

I still haven't heard back from the rescue group that I contacted about having them help me find a home for Fang. And he still hasn't been to see a vet although he seems to be pretty healthy. I keep him seperated from the other cats when I'm not home and able to a close eye on him. While he's a cute little guy and seems really affectionate I just don't want another cat right now and am partial to female cats anyway. Now if he was female orange tabby I'd be much more inclined to keep him. That makes me feel guilty when I think about it but I just haven't had the best of luck with male cats.

My history with male cats has been one bad thing after another. First there was Mickey, a very affectionate black male cat with a white diamond on his forhead. He wasn't very smart, drooled when he purred, and the neighborhood cats used to line up in order to beat him up (I'm not kidding, one time he ran up a tree and three of them sat around the base of it waiting for him to come back down so that they could beat him up again!). He died fairly young shortly after we moved to florida. We believe someone poisoned a bunch of the neighborhood pets including Mickey since a lot of the stray animals disappeared at that time.

Next came Max, a light grey tabby with black stripes who grew up to weight about 15 pounds and little of it was fat. He didn't stay Max for long and was instead referred to as Idiot. And he sure was one! He was continually getting himself stuck in places that it was obvious he wouldn't fit, he had to be made a strickly outdoor cat since he refused to use the litter box, and again all the other male cats, even the ones smaller then him, beat him up. I got really good at cleaning his infected wounds, most of which were located right above his tail. He just disappeared one day and we never found out what happened to him.

Next came Riley, a stray gray tom cat who was missing one hind leg that just showed up at the front door one day and decided to stay. We had him nuetered and got his shots but he wasn't allowed in the house. I spent more mony on trips to the vet with Riley then I have any other cat I've ever had. Even though he was nuetered he still got into one cat fight after another! He'd get abseses up and down both front legs, on his shoulders, and on his head. You'd think that only having one hind leg would be a hindrance but this cat looked like a feline body builder! His shoulders and front legs were massive and his neck was as wide as his head and he had not an ounce of fat on him. He was also very affectionate and well behaved. I finally couldn't afford to taking him to the vet all the time and found him a nice indoor home for him.

On the other hand I've only had one female cat go crazy on me, she had a real Jeckle and Hide personality and belong on kitty prozac. Not that I'd be willing to risk my skin trying to give it to her! She finally ran away since she couldn't stand any of our other animals. Every other female cat I've owned has been affectionate, fairly smart, healthy, and long lived. My current oldest cat, Rascal, lives outside and is 18 years old. She's a bit senile but otherwise a pretty healthy, happy cat.

With a track record like this you can see why I'm hesitant to keep another male cat.

Kara

Hey Kara (I don't get on this conversation forum very often) I found a kitten in the shrubs about 2 months ago and Oyla gave me some advise on that. We decided to keep her. She was not feral I guess someone just dumped her at about 5 weeks old.
We already have 2 male cats and they were freaking out...scared of her. Now one has a new best friend. They rough house and I worry a little about how small she is and how rough he plays. But she seems to love it 'cas she "attacks" him too. She's getting bigger now and I don't worry so much.
Here: Mojo and Lizzy playing

Laura, that a really cute picture! I have a feeling the group is hoping I'll keep him too. Aren't kitten so rambunctious?! I've been bringing Fang into the house more often now that he's getting more friendly. Now that he's more comfortable with me and the other cats he's been trying to play with the Koneko, the younger of my two orange cats. At first she wasn't sure about him but after a while they started trying to play with each other, although Fang was really the one instigating each play session. He keeps charging out from under things and scaring the living daylights out of poor Koneko! lol Last night I had to watch my parents australian terrier puppy, Scout, and after about an hour Fang started getting used to her and procceded to start a rather bizarre game of tag with her. Fang would charge Scout and then Scout would charge Fang. Then Fang would jump onto the coffee table and dart around after Scout as she circled the table looking for him. It was hilarious!

Laura, that look on the kitten's face...is cat for "pure bliss!"