Sunday, August 11, 2013

Dead Neighbor's Black Tux Old Boy



I trapped the black tux boy tonight.  I really wanted to catch his rather feral old boy orange tabby, but when the black tux boy went in, I thought "What the hell" and yanked the cord.

I went high tech and low tech in my selective trapping.  I hooked up the baby monitor to watch the trap while I watched House of Cards.

I watched the entire series of Breaking Bad, all four seasons, when my mouth was all swollen up and painful.  That was awesome and soon I felt like the characters were people I know.  They could have been.  I loved the last episode.  What a classic.

When the head guy visits the old mean ass cartel guy, in the nursing home, the guy who rings the bell, who is just evil too, and the bomb on the wheelchair blows.  The guy comes out, straightens his tie, and it looks like he survived the blast.  Then the camera pans around and you see his right eye and most of the right side of his face and upper body is blown to bits.  Then he drops.

So now I'm doing House of Cards.  There's nobody to really like in that show, a Netflix original about a powerful democratic Congressman in Washington D.C. and the manipulating power plays he plans and executes mostly to get revenge, never out of concern for the good of America or Americans.   What a game.  But...there are no sympathetic characters to latch onto, to make me want to see what happens next.   You want to like some one in the show, but it's a cold hard story line, about power and ruthlessness and manipulation and there is no room for warm fuzzies, which is probably the point, about life in DC.

But it's like punishment to watch it.  I start thinking, "Boy, its like watching the news" and for the most part, I quit watching the news.  I can't watch politics without that old song going through my head, and me humming it, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...."

The dialog is smart at least.

The baby monitor's sender unit has night vision capacity.  The receiver works well, unless you are beyond 30 feet from the sender unit.  I set up the sender unit atop a carrier pointing the camera at the trap and hooked it up to an extension cord so I did not use up batteries.  The receiver also can be plugged in to save on batteries.

I watched Simba, the owned cat from a block away, and his housemate Zeva, the white beauty, arrive and go in and out of the trap, via the baby cam.

My old remote control trap springing unit is currently missing some parts, so I went low tech on springing the trap.  I loosely zip tied a short board to the front, and screwed a metal right angle to the top, which held up the trap door, and one on the bottom, on the outside, to which I tied a line. Pulling the line would swing the board out from under the trap door, letting the door fall, catching the cat inside.  I ran the line in through the window.

When the baby monitor finally showed black tux boy going in, I unplugged the monitor and carried it, battery operated, to the window, so I could watch it, to make sure he was still in there when I yanked the cord that pulled the board prop out from under the trap door.   I caught him without laying eyes on him or the trap, just using the monitor.

He wasn't happy at first, clawing at me through the trap and rolling, like a feral boy.  But he settled in quickly.  He'll stay the night in the trap while his vast colonies of giant fleas die off.  Tomorrow I will decide whether to just let him out again, or just what.  I can't keep another cat in the house.

This morning the always self satisfied Miss Daisy gave her buddy Slurpy a bath.





After the bath, Slurpy was content and Miss Daisy was feeling good about herself, as usual!


No comments:

Post a Comment

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 ...