Netting Kittens/Halloween Echo

Meet Echo! I first met him when I got him fixed, over on Hill St. He was a starving lonely stray. However, he got taken in by the woman who asked for help getting cats fixed there.Below is Echo now. Is he abused or what?



This morning, I was asked to travel down Riverside Drive and meet a KATA volunteer over some kittens. What else?

She had originally asked me to trap the cats living around this trailer and help get them fixed. But then I got the e-mail about the Sunday FCCO clinic, forwarded it to the KATA woman who forwarded it to these folks. They got reservations and traps.

Alas, the woman called the KATA woman worried. The prolific mom had kittens, eyes just barely open, she said. She'd only seen one, but it was hopping off her porch. "Hmmmm," I thought, "Two week old kittens don't run around and jump off porches."

So I met the KATA woman at the trailer. The owner wasn't home but her step son was. He's super nice and was probably frightened by the other volunteer and myself. Just kidding.

So, looking under the handicap ramp on the side of the trailer I spot something way back, near where ramp meets ground. I couldn't see it that well, so I pulled my usual stunt of sticking the camera under there and letting it be my eyes. Here's what the camera showed:


Tabby on white kitten!

With much ado, using a mirror down beside the the lowest part of the ramp, and a flashlight, I spooked the kitten out, but the kitten got by my net. We thought we'd lost the little bugger, until the young man said, in a whisper, pointing at the covered barbacue "It's under there."

So we blocked the lower edges of the barbecue cover with blankets and then I "went in", ground level. Hahahaha. Oh boy. My net is big hooped and torn up, but I managed to net the little girl. She's hardly two weeks, more like 8 weeks.

After she was in a carrier, we spotted black and white under the handicap ramp. We tried to be more deliberate this time, blocking the sides of the ramp as it "ramped up" to the porch, with towels, me using a mirror and stick, to watch the kitten from the tiny hole near the end, at ground level, traps set up under the ramp where the height allowed it.

The kitten spooked forward, but the plan failed, when he bounced sideways and the KATA volunteer moved, and the blanket stuck to her knee, pulling away from the ramp side, revealing light for the little kittens eyes to see.

See that light that kitten did, and darted out that hole and across the yard and disappeared. Oh well. These are trappable kittens. These are not two week old bottle babes. Mom is pregnant again.

When the neighbors trap the cats Friday and Saturday for the clinic, they will catch those kittens, too. We don't need to be crawling around on our faces in the dirt, as upper middle aged slightly pudgy cat wranglers, to get them, just because it's fun, which it is. Can't deny that.

Later, the black and white one and another tabby kitten cavorted in the yard across from us.

The girl we did get, from the barbecue, went home with the KATA volunteer.

I want to dress up every one of my cats next Halloween to look every bit as good as Echo looks in his bug costume.