When Lynne went to release the longhair kitten, she saw the mom cat. It was early in the morning, and she saw cats I hadn’t seen before. Specifically, she saw the mom cat with three tiny kittens. In a perfect world, everyone would be happy to see these new additions, but that’s just not true right now. After this summer, even hearing the phrase “feral kitten” gives me this awful sinking feeling. I know that these kittens are not probably going to find homes, and if someone doesn’t trap them, then they’ll end up having kittens of their own. The kittens that Lynne saw were about eight weeks old, which is too old to socialize, and too young to fix.
When I went out to trap the other day, I knew it wasn’t just the second black kitten and the random black cat I needed to catch. There were three kittens and who knows how many more cats. This problem was bigger than I thought.
Well I went about my business as usual, but didn’t catch any cats immediately. I wondered if the second black kitten had seen its siblings being trapped and was now trap-savvy. So I left the trap open just in case and went home to have dinner.
Around 7pm I biked back to check the trap. Except when I got there, it was gone!
Was it stolen? Sometimes that happens. Did someone see the cat in the trap, think the trap was inhumane, release the cat, and then take the trap with them? I had no idea, but I was freaked.
The first thing I did was call Lynne. She didn’t pick up, but she usually doesn’t, so while I was waiting for her to call back, I went and knocked on Giselle’s door to see if she knew anything. She didn’t know, but we both noticed two traps that had been left on her porch. I decided to call the number on the trap and see if that person knew anything.
The person who picked up was named "Melody" and was the daughter of the lady (Ariel) who feeds the cats. She had heard that Lynne and I were planning on going after the mom cat the next morning, and had thought we would need her two traps. She had noticed a cat in my trap, and had taken it home with her because she thought it would be left there overnight. They lived nearby, so I went to their house and picked up the second black kitten!
I had a long talk with Melody about the cats in the field. I tried to convince her and her mother to use one or two large terra-cotta pot plates as bowls for the cats, instead of a lot of shiny pie tins. I tried to convince them to stop feeding on Giselle’s porch (because she hates it), but both of those were mostly unsuccessful. I feel like the only way to possibly get them to change is to physically put the terra-cotta pot bottoms in the not-abandoned house’s yard and take away the pie tins. I also tried to find out how many cats in total and how many unaltered cats there were, but neither of them knew. I also explained my trapping tips, and encouraged them to trap. (They have trapped in the past, but were both too busy now.)
Anyway, I took the second black kitten back home with me and it spent the night in my shed before going to surgery the next morning.
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