So like on the feral question, does gender play any role in making them tame easier? We have a couple of feral females that are quite loving in they’re own way and as far as I know they were out of that window when they settled down.
Nope. Gender doesn’t have any impact on it.Â
Like most things in life, nature has as much to do with it as nurture does. It’s kinda like... ok, imagine a sliding scale that goes from -10 all the way to +10 to represent sociability. Genetics basically controls where a cat MIGHT land on that scale--- like their sociability lands somewhere between +5 and +7. How much socialization they get during the primary period controls where they eventually end up. So genetics is pretty general, while socialization is more specific.
So, you can end up with a feral with a sociability factor in the positives and get lucky (especially if their parents were originally pets). Most ferals are in the negatives, especially once they’ve been in the wild for a few generations.Â
Personally, I believe that transgenerational inheritance is at play as well: a feral cat who’s ancestors have been abused by humans may be warier of humans, regardless of any later positive interactions they have. Likewise, a feral with ancestors who were once pets may be friendlier.
It’s also important to note that not every cat that’s labeled ‘feral’ is a true FERAL-feral. Sometimes they’re strays. They’re pets that have gotten lost, or been deliberately abandoned. These strays usually have offspring with higher sociability factors---- while my research was specifically on cat-cat socialization and communication within a colony, I couldn’t COMPLETELY ignore the human impact. While I never took part in the maintenance of the colony, I’d still observe human-cat interactions. The kittens of outsider females who I suspected were dumped pets were usually friendlier towards the human caretakers of the colony, while colony kittens were much warier, even if the kittens were around the same age.Â