We went out to two locations on 4/29 (a national holiday in Japan).
Both cases were places that residents had already done TNR, but there
was a newly abandoned female, and a hard to catch female, who gave
birth this spring. So, we're helping with rehoming, and eventually spay
operations. The people were really nice, and it's good to be able to
help folks like this, who are working hard doing the right thing.
The first mother cat is somewhat friendly, in that her care-taker can
touch her. After evaluating the situation, we all decided that this
person is going to begin socializing the 2 week old kittens herself,
while continuing to allow them to nurse from the mom. We'll bring a
bottle and some kitten milk out so that she can supplement their
feeding with this while socialising the kittens.
The mother cat in the other location is feral, so she ran out of the
outside hiding place that had been created for her, when we arrived. We
removed all of the 1 week old kittens, placed them in a cage, set a
trap in front of the cage, and covered everything. This way, the mother
had to enter the trap in order to see the kittens. It took about 1 hour
to trap the mother--longer than we expected, but we finally caught her
and brought her to the shelter with the kittens. Now they are in a
small cage inside a larger cage. It's harder to socialise kittens with
their feral mother present, but we want them to be stable regarding
nutrition/health, before removing her.