Ah ha! Mama-Gabby IS taking good care of her babies. I'm not really surprised, but it's nice to see her nursing. I set up my handy pet cam to record a photo every 5 minutes. Here, you can see Gabby relaxed, instead of hunched up in fear (which is how I usually see her)
Now I must give a shout-out to a few people who've kindly suggested a few things I can do to help Gabby relax and how I should continue on with fostering her. As you can see in the photos, her cat carrier is back in the big dog crate. I removed it because she just hid behind it and it took up a lot of space. Now I find out, it's a MUST for feral fostering.
Trapper Jeanne sent me a link to an article on Neighborhood Cats about how to properly set up a foster situation for Ferals. This article doesn't add any info. for feral MAMAs, but even with this, it's going to help. The one key thing I learned was to keep her confined for two to three weeks, until she settles down. I've been driving our Director nuts, asking her question after question about if I should keep her locked up or not. I want her to be able to stretch her legs, sharpen her claws, but she's been SO destructive from inside the crate, I wonder what she'll do outside of it.
This morning she'd managed to reach out from the crate and pull about 10 books off the nearby bookshelf! Maybe she just wanted to read?
Even as I write this, I can hear her banging around on the crate. What IS she doing? Yeah, trying to escape. She is really banging on that crate. Holy mackerel!
I'll take a deep breath and try to ignore her for a bit. I may put the camera back up to try to get another photo. Until then, THNAK YOU to Monica, Jeanne and Julie for putting up with me and for your helpful suggestions!
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