I set the trap nearby, hoping to catch it, then continued up the field to check out more cat territory. A little ways away I noticed the female tortoiseshell John Smith and I had caught, and she seemed surprisingly less afraid of me. She just looked at me from a safe distance. She looks healthy and happy, and since she's so young I wonder if she'll eventually warm up to people. I actually saw her a couple more times yesterday and today, so I think I want to give her a name. (Plus I have a soft spot for torties.) The problem is, I'm a terrible namer.
Anyway, after cruising around the field for about ten minutes, I went back and glanced at the trap. There was a tabby cat going into it, so I quietly turned around and biked around for a little longer. Then I checked the trap again and sure enough, there was a brown tabby in the trap. He was a young male, with one mangled ear. I couldn't tell if the ear was tipped or not, because it seemed like a clean cut but the rest of the ear was also ripped. So first I called Lynne, but she wasn't home. Then I asked John Smith for help, and he said it was definitely ear tipped, although he had not personally caught the cat. So we released the cat.
On the way over to the trap with John Smith, I spotted the black kitten again in a different place. After releasing the cat I still had time, so I moved the trap to where I'd seen the kitten, and reset it. Then I went over to a house nearby where I've been hired to pet the (domestic) cat while the owner is out of town. (The husband is allergic, so he can feed, but I do the TLC.) I spent about an hour with the kitty and then when I noticed a tailless raccoon outside I decided it was time to go close the trap.
The trap this time had caught a black cat, but not the one I was after. This was another adolescent male with an ear tip! (I swear, adolescent males think they're invincible and they're suckers for tuna.) This cat took me a little longer to release, because he kept trying to attack me through the trap. I swear he wanted to kill me.
Today I went out trapping again. This time I took my brother with me, because he was interested and I figured the more he knows about feral cats, the more he can tell his friends. We biked over and set the trap at a feeding station. The only cat we saw was the tortie who needs a name, so we hoped that a kitty would come to get dinner and decide tuna in a trap was more delicious. After that we went over to the house nearby to pet the kitty for about an hour.
When we had finished petting the kitty, we went back and checked the trap. Nothing. As we were packing up, a lady walking by pointed out the black kitten, who was drinking water from a gutter. We went over and the kitten moved into a front yard of a house, so we set up the trap in the field across the street. Then I grabbed the towel and tried to capture the kitten by hand, but only succeeded in chasing it back into the field and into a bush. I moved the trap to right outside of the bush and then my brother and I biked around for about ten minutes before closing the trap and going home, as it was getting too dark to bike safely.
I really want to trap that little kitten. It looks about six weeks old, and obviously is taking care of itself. I haven't seen any sign of a mom or any littermates. If it sits in one place for a while, it starts crying as if it's lost. I just hope I can trap the poor thing so that its life can improve.
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