Help me house these half-wild babies on the mend

At the end of August this year, I started noticing pairs of kitten siblings wandering around (climbing trees!) in my neighborhood on Prairie du Chien Rd by N. Dodge Hy-Vee. After a few weeks had passed where I saw them nearly every night, I grabbed a few cans of wet food and started knocking on the doors of houses near where I had seen them most often.

A kind woman with a large property had been feeding them, and it turned out the two kittens I’d often seen were actually five siblings and a mama cat. As winter was approaching, she accepted my help to trap, spay/neuter, and try to rehome them.

As of now all but one of the six has been spay/neutered, vaccinated for rabies and distemper, and marked as TNR by their ear tips. (Thank you, thank you Iowa City Animal Adoption and Humane Alliance).

The mama cat and one kitten have been returned to the wild - even after a month of human contact and delicious stinky food, they were incredibly unhappy and 100% disinterested in living indoors among humans. As the ravines behind Prairie du Chien Rd were a habitat the mama had occupied for years (she was estimated to be six), she and her one stubbornly feral kitten will continue to fill the same predator niche and occupy the same territory without it being filled by another cat. Most importantly, neither of them will be producing multitudes of new kittens.

The other three kittens have made incredible strides in their acceptance and enjoyment of human company. With the help of my neighbor, we have managed to trap them, get them spay/neutered+rabies+distemper, and house them in a cozy section of my basement separated from my other animals. With sections of the ceiling and drywall covered in chicken wire, their room has been affectionately nicknamed THE KITTEN DUNGEON.

We started by feeding them with wooden spoons, a proximity they were reluctant to allow, and have worked up to having them eat out of my hand and rub up against my leg for pets. During this whole experiment, they have been absolutely polite and strict users of the litter box, which I took as a very good sign for their eventual home placement.

Unfortunately, Iowa City Animal Adoption Center is beyond capacity, with no registered foster locations available for half-wild babies on the mend. Without intervention, the options for these three were euthanasia or a return to the wild (and overburdening our ecosystem with their hunting).

The next leg of their journey requires more vet care; I need to have them dewormed and tested for the highly contagious feline leukemia virus. This will help me know if I can stop treating anything they touch as having the plague, and allow me to let them have more of a homey experience upstairs in a separated kitten room of my house.

The lowest vet quote I received was $372 for these services. Any additional funds received would also go towards a continued vet care fund, food/litter/housing, including specialized disinfectant to make sure everyone is as sanitary and as healthy as possible. (Shoutout to my animal shelter friends and their wisdom/recommendations).

Any leftover donations would be evenly split between the Iowa City Animal Adoption Center and the Iowa Humane Alliance.

Thank you so much for reading this far and for considering a donation to help me finish this wild experience.