Feral #40 & 41

It has been almost a year since our last trapping.

This entire time we've known about a couple of unfixed females, and they have of course had kittens over the last year (sigh), but they have either come over very inconsistently, or not at all and have only been visible from a distance (in other yards).  Finally, over the course of the last month, several of the older kittens from this past year's litters have started attending dinner on a regular basis, and we've jumped at the opportunity.

"Little Girl" 

This little girl recently started showing up for dinner on a daily basis.  She was quick to figure out the trap, and preferred it as a less interruptible eating spot.  After a week or so of the same routine, we knew it was time to make an appointment.  On trap night, we kept to the same feeding routine as normal, and she went right in.  It only took a couple of minutes!

"Fat Face Gray"

 

This guy is officially the smartest male we've come across.  Most toms, when they encounter the trap for the first time, will circle around it for several minutes before leaving because they can't figure out how to get the food on the inside.  Not this dude.  We lowered the trap into our utility easement and he figured it out and went in less than five minutes later.  Thanks for making it easy on us!  This cat is probably father to a large number of the cats born over the last couple of years.  Most of the males are so inconsistent we don't even list them as official colony members, but we've seen this one on and off regularly for at least 2 years now.  He has just never been around on a consistent enough basis for trapping.  We were fishing for more of the mature kittens the other night, like "little girl", but we're not picky.  An unfixed cat went in the trap.  We weren't going to pass that up!

Celebrating 40 Cats!

   

We picked up this bottle of wine at a local liquor store about a year ago, after fixing #39, to celebrate #40, not knowing we'd have to wait so long to drink it.  It's a fund-raiser bottle for the Humane Society we've been working with, and we feel at this point that a shout-out is necessary.  Without their commitment to the welfare of local cats, we would be overrun with ferals, and at this point our neighbors or town may have used alternative methods to solve the problem.  So thank you Wild at Heart for providing low-cost vouchers for feral cat spay/neuter, Humane Society of Boulder Valley for accepting the vouchers and fixing the cats, and Alley Cat Allies for providing information we can pass on to new neighbors.  Cheers!

Predators

We recently found the very cleanly severed front quarter of the feral cat we called Crazy Legs and believe a coyote caught him. Crazy Legs didn't have very good control of his back half and was generally very clumsy.  We assumed it was some sort of neuromuscular condition, and most likely Feline Cerebellar Hypoplasia. This probably made him the easiest target for a coyote. Coyotes do roam in and around town, we have heard them, and they have been sighted down the block. It is easy to forget that even though we live in suburbia, Mother Nature is not very far away, and these feral cats have to interact with her.

There aren't many other local predators in the area that we think would attack a cat.  The local great-horned owls could take a cat, but it is unlikely to leave one in the state we found Crazy. 

We have 36 cats on our list that have disappeared since we started this project (using our attendance tracking technique). This is the first adult cat we have actually found deceased.

RIP Crazy Legs

Feral #39

We have had our share of interesting catches, and this one is no exception. We had to convince this cat that a regular cat-carrier (not a trap) was an upscale place to eat!

"Scruffy Tuxedo" aka "Charlie Chaplin" aka "Fancy Man"

 

This beefy male has been around for some time. We originally thought that he was a long haired cat, but it turns out that he is just very large. A staggering 14 pound feral (around twice as big as most of the cats). We had our suspicions about him fitting into the traps when he first started coming into the yard. The last couple of weeks of watching him figure out how the trap worked proved it. He would get about half way in before his sides hit the walls which caused him to back out. We spent a lot of time thinking of alternative ways to get him, and our success comes in a most surprising way.

We spent our evenings putting food just inside the entrance of the trap and then staying close by. After awhile, he decided that we were not dangerous and would let us get close. We started putting food into a carrier and letting him eat while we sat there with him. We thought about different ways to secure the door after he went in and figured just being friendly would allow us to close the door by hand. Each night, we would move the food further and further into the carrier until he would go all the way in on his own. That's when we made the appointment. On the night of trapping, we thought we'd treat him with the wet food that we have. He wanted none of it. Only after we switched back to the regular crunchy food did he go into the carrier. What a snob! We gently closed the door of the carrier behind him, and now he will probably never trust us again. Lucky for us, we got what we wanted from him (his reproductive organs).  He is also the only cat to walk out of the carrier and away from us in a dignified way at release time; most cats run. 

Feral #38

This is the offspring of our last catch, Tawny Tabby. Constantly enthralled by us, we had a hard time getting this cat interested in the contents of the trap.

"Copper-Eyes Silver Tabby"

We saw this cat as a kitten earlier in the year and we tried to catch her while she could still be socialized. Unfortunately, she wouldn't come out of the utility easement. We tried a new Netting technique to catch her, but she escaped. We thought she was gone forever until she showed up a couple weeks later. Since then, she has stayed in the utility easement and hasn't wanted to come in the yard, but she is still surprisingly interested in us. We peek over the fence and she sits there and stares at us. She stretches up the fence to try and get closer to us. We imagine she thought that we were just some magic floating heads above the fence! To get her used to it, we started lowering the trap into the easement with bait food. This cat stood on top of the trap and tried to use it to get closer to our floating heads. Eventually, Tawny Tabby showed her how to get the good food in the trap. That's when we knew it was time. We made the appointment and caught this little cat.  She reunited with Mom (Tawny Tabby) just after being released, and it made our day. 

Our Two Year Feral TNR Anniversary

With September comes the second anniversary of our Trap-Neuter-Return effort with our neighborhood feral cat colony. We have to thank the wonderful people at Wild At Heart and the Humane Society of Boulder Valley. The process has proved to be intense and interesting while simultaneously tedious, time consuming, and slow. However, we are showing that TNR does work with the proper persistence.  Persistence is the key, because without it, if we quit, the colony would again increase in size over time.  

Buddy, our colony mascot, supervising the garden
from a sunny high point the day before he disappeared
for good. We suspect that curiosity may have gotten
the best of him.

We've experimented with a lot of traps and tools. We've tracked the population and watched it fluctuate both up and down. We've done our best to record all of the data that we can. Call it a scientific approach to feral cat management. We've been fortunate to find homes for some kittens while they were young enough and unfortunate to find the remains of the others that nature deemed not so lucky. We have never found a dead adult cat and we often ponder about what happened to them when they do disappear. The population is currently half of what it was at its highest point and we can only imagine in dread at the large number of cats there would be if we had not started this project two years ago. We are still optimistic that our efforts will someday lead to a humane end for the entire colony.

"I was told there would be pizza and beer."

We should also say that we have been pleasantly entertained by the cats (at times). It is important to remember that these animals did not have a choice in their current situation. We are witness to the behaviors that have bound Felis Catus to human societies for thousands of years. We choose to observe them in this environment only because there are there, just as they observe us because we are here. Their intra-colony relationships and hierarchies can be quite interesting, and their silly behaviors provide some good laughs. They are ultimately doomed to the same fate as their ancestors before them, just as we are. We can only do our part to prevent their offspring from that fate by directly preventing the creation of offspring while, at the same time, not punishing these cats for simply existing.

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"What have you done to me!? Why is the room spinning!?"

"What do you guys think these are for?" This is the day we bought our traps.

"Thank you Giant Bipedal Mammals. I will spare you...for now."

Feral #37

This was one of quickest captures ever.  It took less than 5 minutes.

"Tawny Tabby"

This brown tabby cat has been in the yard a few times, but we mostly see her in our utility easement. The first time we spotted her, she had a small kitten in tow. We attempted to get the kitten, came really close, but it ended up escaping. Since we knew this cat was still nursing, we decided to wait and let her become more comfortable around us so we could trap her easily once the kitten was fully weaned.  This worked.  We lowered the trap over the fence into the utility easement with some wet food and she went right in! Unfortunately, the kitten is much too old for the Humane Society to socialize now, so we'll have to fix it eventually.  Since it is around most of the time and is clearly interested in us, it shouldn't be too difficult.  We just need to spend a bit more time getting it used to the trap.  As a side note, the kitten came over to greet 'mom' when we released her.  It was super cute.

Feral #36 and Numbers Update

This catch is particularly exciting! This cat has been pregnant many times and we're glad she won't have any more kittens after today.

"The Visitor"

"The Visitor" is an interesting case. She has been present since the beginning of this project, but she has been the most elusive and stubborn cat we've come across. At one point, we determined that she was not a true member of the colony and this probably contributed to her behavior. She would venture through the yard without stopping. We would put traps in her usual route hoping to get her, but to no avail. Members of the colony seemed to strangely tolerate her, as member cats chase away other cats that aren't part of the colony, but not her. 

She is the mother of the kittens from our last post. In the past, we have seen her slowly grow to full term pregnancy, disappear for a few days, and come back not pregnant. However, we never saw her with kittens. This time was different. After giving birth, she was around all day every day. After about 5 weeks, we finally saw the kittens and were able to get them to the humane society for socializing and adoption.

Now that we knew she wasn't nursing any more, we set out on a mission to trap her. We were nervous that after we took the kittens, she would revert to her wandering ways. She had never been in a trap and couldn't figure it out, though she clearly wanted the food we put in it. Eventually, the drop trap we sometimes use turned out to be the winning ticket! Her legacy as a mother can finally end and she can live out the rest of her life without having to deal with the relentless pursuit of unfixed males and the inevitable pregnancies & kitten rearing that follow.

Numbers Update

It's been few months since the last numbers update. There was a slight uptick in the spring while other unfixed male cats were roaming through the area regularly, but there has been a slight downward trend in population this year overall. The colony has had an overall downward trend in population since we started this project twenty-one months ago, and it is almost half the size it was a year ago. For more information about how these numbers are generated, please check out our post about our Procedural Population Tracking.