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.
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