9 Hours

Nine hours.

That's the amount of time I spent Sunday at the Salem colony attempting to catch last unfixed cats there.  Nine hours in my car, no less, most of that time--barely breathing, so the car would not move and alert the cats.

They were supposed to have fed tasty wet food under the drop trap, lots of it, or mixed into dry, since I trapped last time, at the same time of day.  This was to make it easy on me.  I wanted the cats to be swarming that drop trap, anxious, waiting for their tasty treat at 4:30 every day.  That didn't happen.  Why?  I don't know.  I even left them a large brown grocery bag full of wet food.

I expected to go there Saturday night and have them swarming the drop trap, waiting for the wet food, at 4:30.  Didn't happen.  When he got the plate ready, so it would look the same as usual, I could see why.  There were about two spoonfuls of wet food in the dish.  Enough for maybe one cat. 

I thought "Shit, this won't go well".

But the female who lives basically under a heat lamp on an upper shelf in the pole barn dutifully immediately came to eat.  I trapped her under the drop trap within ten minutes of arrival.  There were no other cats around when I did this, which made me super excited and I thought "ok, this might work". 

But I stayed til 9:00 p.m. and not another cat went under the drop trap.  In fact they carefully suspiciously went around it, to look for food in the regular bowls.

A highly reproductively active female, Felinity, now fixed.

I got back to the colony by 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning.  I would have been there earlier but I encountered a detour as I exited the freeway and tried to go down Turner Road.  The road was blocked with signs "Road Closed" and a Detour sign pointed south along an access road by the freeway.  Now, Detour signs in Oregon often are the road to nowhere.  It's like they put up a few and then get distracted and you end up who the hell knows where.

This case was no exception.  I drove a few miles south, wondering wtf.  Finally I encountered a Detour sign pointing east and took the left.   I got to a T in that road after several miles and a Detour sign pointed left.  But not a quarter mile down that road, another Detour sign pointed left again down another road, west, back towards the freeway.

Gosh I hate this, I thought.  I ignored the sign and headed off in the right direction instead.   And finally entered Turner.  From there I could find the colony.

I set two large traps once there, and within ten minutes caught the long hair gray tabby I'd seen only once before, a fleeting glimpse, out in the pole barn, in the dark. 

I thought this one would be a male, but turned out to be a female, and post partum.  Not lactating though.  I'm sure some of the gray long hair teens I'd caught earlier this month were hers.  I had named the cat Radar.

Then began the long long wait for other known unfixed cats.  I know of a tabby on white I'd seen the day before, briefly, no ear tip.  He or she had come down the hill with a long hair unfixed orange kitten.  That one needs caught too.

The weather was bad, pouring rain, cold, very hard to see cats through my windshield.  No one touched the drop trap all day.   So I had a single trap set on one side of the pole barn.  I draped a sheet across part of my windshield, so cats could not see me as easily in the car.  The pole barn is open.  Then there's a large gravel area, where they sometimes park or turn around, between the two sided pole barn and their garage that abuts their house.  You cannot see the pole barn from the house, nor check traps in the barn without coming outside, which alerts all the cats.  So I had to stick it out in my car, so a a cat would not get caught in the trap, sit there in it while I was inside the house, other cats see it in the trap, scared, then its all over.

I was after Goldie, a large long hair orange male with a bad leg injury.  He hops, not putting weight on his left front leg.  I was after that tabby on white mystery cat I'd glimpsed the night before.  I was after the long hair orange kitten.  And if I was super lucky, I thought, maybe I'd catch a big male who rarely is seen, but sometimes roams in to fight, eat and have sex with females.

I littered the area around the big trap with catnip.  I figured that would help with Goldie.  It was mid day, about 1:00 p.m. when Goldie came down the hill out of the berry vines.  He was flanked by two fixed teens, Buffy, a long hair orange and white fixed male, and a little girl.  They adore him and were rubbing heads with him and he would return the head bumps.  It was a poignant scene.

I held my breath. Goldie immediately began rolling in the catnip sprinkled around the trap.  I knew he'd then get interested in the trap, losing judgement that it could be a threat to him.  But would the teens trip it first?  I made slight movements when they looked my direction, trying to remind them I was here and of their own time in live traps with me.   They retreated a bit up the bank, together, but would come back down.  They were all hungry.  Finally I see Goldie's rear end.  He's half in the trap.  I held my breath again, not daring to move a muscle.  Suddenly the trap snapped closed.  Goldie was caught.

Goldie's injured leg

It would be hours before the tabby on white came out of the dusk to the trap.  It was a small trap now and the only one I had left.  I blew it in that regard.  But by now it was 4:00 p.m.  The cat dorked around for awhile and finally went into the trap and it was sprung.

Dakota, a young tabby on white female fixed Monday.

At that point, I came home.  My traps were full and nine hours was long enough to spend there.  I was stiff and cold and sore.  But also I was happy to have caught four more adults there.   I know there's the kitten left and the occasional male who I may never catch.   To get the adults was the most important at the time.

The tabby on white turned out to be a young pregnant female.  The black and white female was also pregnant.  And, as mentioned, the long hair gray tabby female was post partum.  She would soon be in heat again.   They cleaned Goldie's leg wound yesterday when he was neutered and even sutured it.  He'll be here resting in a cage a week probably, to give it a chance to heal. It's a fight wound.  He got an antibiotic injection too.

The fifth cat fixed yesterday was Tequila, the black torti, from the burned out house colony.  She was in heat at spay.

Tequila is leaving tomorrow with Ebony, the black kitten, both from the same colony, to go to the same barn home as Dude.

So, I feel good about getting those four adults at the Salem colony.   The nine long cold hours in my car were worth it.  But that's just me I think.  I can't think of anyone else who would sit there like that so long to catch three cats.  The obsessive cat trapper!  That's me!