Feral #32

We have been trying to get this girl into a trap for some time now.  She is extremely skittish and usually leaves the yard promptly when she sees us, making this trapping exciting and educational.

"Big Eyed Marble"

We trigger the traps manually so that we can avoid catching cats that are already fixed.  We use a stick tied to a long string to prop open the door.  Because this cat rarely stays in the yard when we are outside, this was going to be tricky. We started by running the strings the full length of the yard, but she still was leaving with us there, so we ended up running the ropes through the screen door of the house and sitting and waiting inside, out of view. This worked, she came into the yard while the traps were primed!

Also of note, we tried a fish based soft food this evening thinking, "What cat doesn't like fish?" Turns out, the feral cats in this colony don't.  A number of them didn't seem interested at all. The cats that did come by were only taking a few bites and leaving. So we took a risk and went outside while she was in the yard (since she clearly wasn't attracted to the trap bait) and swapped out one of the bowls with a chicken flavor bait. This brought a couple of cats over, attracted to the new smell. After little hesitation this time, she went in and we got her!

Feral #31

A dim note to start our new trapping season, but also a case we had yet to encounter...

Warmer weather meant that we had the opportunity to try trapping again, and we caught our first for the season. This is our 31st overall.  This cat, who we had dubbed "Fence Tabby Two," had rarely been seen in the yard until the last few weeks.  He had mostly been seen on the other side of our fence only (hence his name).  He had been around more recently because it is mating season, and that always brings the unfixed males back from their extended, wandering adventures.

"Fence Tabby Two"

Unfortunately, the vet discovered a serious medical issue when we brought him in to be fixed.  Every single one of his teeth were extremely diseased.  We had noticed some bloody drool after trapping him, and we thought he had cut his mouth on the trap somehow (there are no sharp edges on the trap). The vet told us that wasn't the case. His teeth were so bad that simply eating would have caused them to bleed.  The vet described the feeling of this condition to us "like having a non-stop root canal on every single tooth at the same time...with no anesthesia."  The vet believed that euthanasia was the best choice, and we agreed.  The other options were 1) fix him, release him, and watch him die a very slow and painful death to eventual starvation, or 2) we could have ALL of his teeth extracted, resulting in the same end.  This guy got dealt a difficult hand in life being feral in the first place, and this condition made it exponentially worse.  We are glad that he is no longer suffering.

Start Your Engines

"Eh, What's up, Cat?"

There has finally been some warm, dry weather and we thought it would be a good time to get out there and see if we could trap one of our remaining targets. We thought we were going to have to wait until daylight savings time kicked in to start the project again, but Mother Nature gave us an opportunity. Unfortunately, we haven't trapped any more, but we have some interesting observations to share.

1. Cats forget.  It has been just under 4 months since our last trapping, and since we haven't been feeding out of the traps during the winter, it seems that many of the cats have forgotten how the traps work. Almost all of the cats approached the traps, sniffed at them, and paced around them trying to figure out how to get to the food. Only about half found the entrances and the other half wandered away.  As long as the weather is nice, we will fix this by doing daily feedings out of the traps again. 

2. We have significantly changed the colony since this time last year.  Last Fall (when we started keeping track), the unfixed cats significantly outnumbered fixed cats. Now, the opposite is true!
 

3. Almost all of the cats made it through Winter.  We decided on a two month verification period (two months unseen) before we officially remove a cat from the attendance roll.  Some of the cats don't frequent our yard as much as others, so this keeps us from mistakenly removing them.  We had not done an "official" attendance check since our last trapping, but during the last week, we've seen all but 3 cats. Those three still have time to show themselves though.  Additionally, we had to add a fixed(!) cat to the list that we had never seen before (complete with ear-tip, so it's probably not someone's pet).