Screening a Home

Yesterday Lynne invited me to observe the screening of a potential home for feral cats. Before I talk about the trip, I have to clarify some thing just so that the story is understandable.

Project Purr does not have colonies of cats around the county, and they do not add feral cats to existing colonies. Project Purr also does not trap cats from colonies and find new homes for them (except in extreme conditions where the cats can absolutely not be returned to where they were trapped). Sometimes cats are brought into the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter, and are deemed unadoptable because they are feral or just too scared in the shelter to show affection towards people. Those cats are euthanized. Whenever possible, Project Purr rescues these cats and finds new homes for them as "garden cats." Members of the community will contact Project Purr asking for these cats for various reasons, the most common being that having a predator on the property to kill gophers, rats, and mice is a more natural and environmentally friendly way of controlling a rodents population than, say, poison. These members of the community will receive three rescue cats. The cats live in a hutch for three weeks on the property, and then are let out and live the rest of their lives outside. The community members provide food, water, and shelter, and the cats keep the rodents away. Most of the time these cats remain afraid of people, but every once in a while one will warm up, and then the community members are lucky enough to have a gardening companion.

Ok, now back to yesterday!

Recently Lynne received an email from a couple, Alfons and Alida, hoping to obtain some garden cats. Apparently Alfons and Alida, who live up in redwood country, had quite a rat problem. It had started out with Alida, who loves animals, feeding birds. The spilled bird food had attracted unwanted visitors, and then the rats moved into their heating system. After over $12,000 worth of damage and still more rats, a neighbor had recommended Project Purr. (The neighbor had also just received his own hutch of three cats, and was very enthusiastic about the program.) Alfons and Alida thought that using cats to fix the rat problem would be a much more effective and environmentally friendly solution than anything else. (After all, you can spend so much time and effort to kill all the rats in the house, but then a few months later, they come back. Cats will continually keep a population down.) Before giving cats to anyone, Lynne and Margaret like to screen the house, just to make sure the cats are going to a safe home, where they will have places to hide from predators, no aggressive dogs, etc. Lynne invited me to come along, so I could see how the process goes.

Alfons and Alida live in a beautiful home in the middle of the redwood forest. They also have two small dogs- a Basenji mix and a purebred miniature poodle, so I was obviously happy. Alfons and Alida gave us a tour of their backyard, which was actually a fenced in large deck. The dogs were obviously well-loved (and in good shape too), and had even had a little doggie door with a ramp! The bird feeders were set up in the best way, so that they were not accessible to any predator, and there was a tarp underneath so that the rats could no longer eat the seeds that fell. Alfons and Alida then showed us where they thought the cats could live. Instead of on the deck where the dogs lived, the cats would be able to go underneath it. Most of the deck was fenced in, except for several cat-sized holes. It would be a good place to get away from the elements and safe from predators. Alfons and Alida then showed us where they wanted to put the hutch, but Lynne had to make a slight adjustment so that the hutch could be on flatter ground. All in all, Alfons and Alida impressed us with their obvious love of animals and commitment to the environment. We all agreed that their future three cats will love living at their house as much as we enjoyed visiting.

When we got back to Lynne's house (after several detours, including a local home turned plant sale) Lynne introduced me to her newest shelter rescues. We talked about a hutch that contained two new torbies (tortoiseshell tabbies) and the younger black male I had helped Lynne pick up from the shelter a while back. Although the torbies had only been rescued the day before, they were obviously settling in very well, and got along wonderfully with the little black cat. Since the two torbies both had pink noses (which means more prone to skin cancer), Lynne thought Alfons and Alida might have the perfect home for them. After all, the cats would mostly be under the deck, which is away from the sun. Also, all three of the cats' colorings would be able to camouflage well in the surroundings.

Hopefully everything works out and I'll be able to help Lynne and Margaret take the cats in their hutch out to their new home. But as for tomorrow, well let's just say I have some trapping adventures very early in the morning.