Hi! So first of all I’m in NYC and we found a mama cat (about a year old) with her three kittens (about two or three months?) while I was looking for a different cat with my friend. She has done this before and has some sort of TNR license, we met because she was working to trap a litter of strays behind my house.
Long story short! The family of cats lives in this lady’s backyard under a wooden platform. We don’t know if mama cat is hers, she’s never claimed any ownership over them but it does seem like she feeds them. The neighbor (who is totally fine with us staying on his side) told us she feeds them bread but they stay outside. The day we saw them my friend and I tried to talk to her by ringing the doorbell and leaving our info but my friend did go into her backyard to feed them. That’s when the homeowner confronted her for being in her property (and shes totally right for doing that, we should’ve never crossed her property). My friend tried to explain we could get mama cat spayed for her and find a home for the kittens but she wouldn’t listen.
That happened Friday. On Saturday I had work so I only checked on them and left, staying on her neighbors property. Nothing happened. On Sunday I fed them and then went to work. Monday my friend and I went again cus she wanted to try to trap them, she again crossed to her backyard to get closer to them and the lady came out. She scolded me, she recognizes me cus my hair is dyed red. She thinks I’m the one orchestrating all this and said I even brought someone dressed in all black on Saturday night who went into her backyard (turns out it was my friend). We just left, I wanted to apologize but was afraid it would just escalate everything. She was mad and I know she is right to be, it is her property after all and we started on the wrong foot by going in to check on the kittens.
I went back today during my lunch hour, sat and ate my lunch to get them familiarized so it’s easier to rescue them. But they didn’t come out cus the neighbor had already fed them, so then i decided to go again after work when they were hungry and just do the same thing. This time they came out to the neighbor’s side and ate with me sitting there for a bit until i made the mistake of taking a video of a squirrel that was running around. She talked to me through the cameras and told me to stop taking pictures of her property. I couldn’t make out the rest cus it started cutting out but i left.
I’m scared to keep doing it. Now I know the safest thing to do is stay on her neighbor’s side and don’t even take any pics of the cats or anything else. But what if she just straight up calls the police next time? I can’t get in trouble, there’s too much on the line for me and the cats are not malnourished or visibly neglected. They’re not being taken care of for sure, they’re outside and it’s getting colder, they’re not used to humans and they’ll just keep growing and getting pregnant. What should I do?