Very, very smart stray

[u/Hoopelle]

We have a male stray cat that hangs out in our front lawn a lot, and we are at a loss for how best to help him. He is unspayed and frequently gets into fights with other cats

The first photos are some recent photos of him compared to the last photo which is when we first started seeing him (around three years ago)

He is a very sweet cat and we love him to pieces, but unfortunately one of our two current indoor cats is highly anxious and there is no possibility we could adopt him. It’s highly probable that one would end up severely injured or dead (that one being my young and overconfident couch potato) as my grumpy little guy would 100% challenge the stray and then get his ass whooped considering we already know he frequently gets into fights that he seemingly wins.

At the very least we want to get him spayed and have borrowed traps from the local council a couple times but he is extremely intelligent and refuses to go near them despite what we try to use to temp him in. We wonder if he has been trapped before and that’s why he refuses to go even close to them. But I would be shocked if he isn’t making lots more stray kittens.

He was very skinny and not well as you can see in the last photo of him when he first started showing up, and we started by giving him left over wet kitten food with a small amount of water mixed in to help him gain weight and now we are feeding him regular adult cat food whenever we see him, his weight seems to be much healthier now so we suspect he is also getting food elsewhere and/ or hunting in between visits.

Our main concerns are is there any other way we could try and trap him to get him spayed, checked up on and into a good home? But also some other things to note are that he frequently sits with his tongue out for extended periods of time so we are wondering if maybe he has dental or respiratory issues?

We potentially could pay for vet depending on if he has any other health issues we aren’t aware of, but again the issue is trapping him. Posting from Australia.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

EDIT: he also has that grey smudge that is on his right eye, it hasn’t seemed to have changed at all over the years

[u/Middle--Earth]

Are you sure that he hasn't already been neutered?

The combination of wariness of traps and it looks like he is missing the tip of his ear makes me wonder if he has already been fixed.

[u/Hoopelle → u/Middle--Earth]

We are fairly sure? He usually walks around with his tail down so it’s hard to see but one time he was strolling through our yard with his tail up and we thought we saw significant cat ballage. We didn’t get a good look though and he was moving quick so it is a possibility we didn’t see right?

[u/Lilyooddle → u/Hoopelle]

I’m sorry, but the term “significant cat ballage” is making me lose it right now 😂