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).