Sunday, June 17, 2007

Crawling with Cats

I went to trap a couple more cats at the Millersburg Country colony. Two of the five gray kittens had died. The trailer woman had put them back outside, trying to get a young mother to care for them who is not a good mother. She had said there were only three of the older 8 week old tabby tux kittens. But there are five. That mother also needs fixed. And those five, who are not competing well for the sparce adult dry cat food, the cheapest available, are getting run down.

She wandered out back of the trailer, while I quickly caught two adult males in one trap, then transferred one to another trap, and spotted one of the two silver tabby sisters, with two different kittens. I went and snagged them, tired of the cat and kitten chaos out there. I then thought I had trapped the mother, but I didn't. I trapped the other silver tabby, another female. There are ten or more adults left to trap out there, besides the three I trapped this evening and the four already fixed. And, there are at least 13 kittens that I know of.

I find out tonight the neighbor across the street has ferals appearing in her barn now, too. Remains to be seen if they're the same cats. They're going to be spillovers from this colony, that has reproduced unchecked for years.

The trailer woman's means of keeping the colony from numbering in the hundreds was to give the kittens born to pet stores and feed stores to get rid of them, or most of them, overpopulating the valley with unfixed kittens and cats, as is often the case. So I don't even want the kittens to be given away unfixed from there.

This colony started as a bad idea to breed and sell manxes.

The trailer woman's neice is now living on property in a camp trailer. The moment she graduated high school she was kicked out of the house by her stepmom so had to come live on the property of the trailer woman's parents, who live up front of the trailer in a house. So, I'm going to build yet another cage and she has agreed to contain the kittens, socialize them, keep them well, and when they're two pounds, I'll find a way to get them fixed and post them on my petfinder site.A brown tabby tux male, to be fixed tomorrow.
Pale Orange male, to be fixed tomorrow.
Silver Tabby female, but not the silver tabby female who is the mother of the kittens below, currently in my bathroom, but going back to be fostered by the neice tomorrow.
Silver Tabby Male Kitten.
And his sister, the only two survivors of this litter.

2 comments:

  1. I know, they're darling. Their mother is going up to be spayed today. Looks just like their in heat aunt, spayed yesterday.

    ReplyDelete

Round Up

Today is cat round up for tomorrow's five spots.  Two more came up from the vet student in Harrisburg late this morning.  Over 60 fixed ...