I Didn't Order a Kitten!

[Folly's place]

Agree that she looks older than your stated best guess.
What's her weight?
Mary

 

[Not-so Slick Chicken]

I haven’t found that mothers make good mousers either. There is a somewhat feral cat that eats my nice barn cats’ food, and I tolerate her. I need to spay her, but I can’t catch her. (Because of her feral-ness and she’s pretty smart) She kills songbirds all the time, but she ran off when she saw a mouse. What a baby.

As a kid, I used to be the feral cat catcher. (That's where my childhood cat came from.)

I'd set up a large wire dog crate with cat kibble and water inside, and would have twine tied on the open door, and loop through the side of the crate (poor explanation. But basically, once you pull your end of the twine, it slams the gate shut).

The trick is... that gate cannot close or move until you have all the cats you need to catch in (such as, moms and kittens...)
Once that gate closes, if any get out or see what happened, you can never catch them again.

It's like the human-powered version of those live traps.
Takes a lot of patience. But if the door is propped open so it can't accidentally close, they'll eventually feel safe enough to let their guard down. Could take weeks. Or could take one day.

I might have put a couple towels on the crate so it felt less exposed? But they still needed to feel like they weren't walking into a trap.

 

[cassie]

How did it go?

Went fine. Except that free pets end up being very expensive.

 

[Appalachickens]

Bless you for taking care of the sweet little thing. All our cats were not ordered by us - they just appear looking for a home.