The Cold Turn

 We were experiencing such pleasant days.

Not warm but not cold either.  Near 70.

Then came the plunge two days ago, back to mid to low fifties and colder at night.

I think its the abrupt changing that takes its toll on me.

I had a task for tomorrow, made a couple weeks back.  A Lacomb lady got FCCO spots for tomorrow.  I was to help trap/transport.

This morning it was time to trap.   I was also helping a woman a couple miles from this Lacomb colony, who also had contacted the FCCO.  She had two cats show up.  She hadn't been routinely feeding the black one, who liked her own cat.  She wanted the black one to stay.  But the orange one had attacked her boy and she wanted him gone.  After I explained I don't adopt out cats and that relocation is quite a task, she agreed to take on finding him a barn home if she catches him.  

The first morning she set one of my traps she caught the black one.  I went and picked the cat up and didn't look too closely at it til home.  I also lent her a trail cam, since something had messed with one of the traps, rolled it and drug the towel covering it, a few feet.

Once home, I checked out the black cat.  Low and behold he or she had a right ear tip already.  The cat is fixed.

I put Revolution on the back of its neck, through the trap and transferred the cat into a cage, to be more comfortable until the lady could come back and get him today.

When she came today to get him, she handed me the game cam and I checked the SD card, to see what she'd caught on the camera in the night.   She caught only three animals on the camera--the orange cat, a rabbit and her dog.

Maybe she'll catch him tonight.

Meanwhile, I was told by another colony caretaker, this one in Albany, who also contacted the FCCO and for whom I'd agreed to help trap/transport, that one of the teenagers she feeds was pregnant.  She has to relocate these cats, fed at her workplace, to her own property.  The rest won't be fixed til the 24th.  So I went over to catch the pregnant one, to prevent her from giving birth in the field behind where they are fed.  Then, if we caught her later, she couldn't be relocated because there would be kittens out somewhere.  

I went over just after dark with my drop trap.   I saw only her under the truck and set a trap but before I got back to my car a gray one was caught in it.  Her sibling.  I berated my laziness over not setting up the drop trap to get her and then I did set it up.  I waited out about four other cats who went under it to eat and finally saw her edge under and finally all the way under.  It was very dark and difficult to make out who was who under the trap.   Some ducks had waddled up in front of my car by then and chose to sit down right atop the drop trap pull line.  Great, I thought.  But I gave the line a slight jiggle and they moved off it.  I yanked the cord and caught the little calico.  I don't think she's pregnant.  

The feeder lady is going to build a big relocation cage, but since she hasn't done that yet, at her place, I am loaning her a cage to acclimate these two teens, once fixed, to her own place.

The little calico

The calicos sibling.  Both will be fixed at the FCCO tomorrow.

This morning I went to catch whom I could catch at the other Lacomb colony.  I'd left traps for her to feed in and under.  But the drop trap was no use as the cats were spooked, so I just set single traps and caught them one by one.  I caught all six of the regulars that way, including one who is so pregnant I didn't risk bringing her home.  Instead I sent her to a rescue.   She looked so uncomfortable pregnant and like she was about to start popping them out.   I didn't want kittens born in the trap.

So I just brought the five home, with the sixth off to rescue.  And will take seven cats in all up to be fixed tomorrow.  These five Lacomb cats, and then the two Albany siblings.

Miss Preggie is having her kittens indoors and warm, at a rescue.  Her five colony mates below will be fixed tomorrow.

So that's what I did last couple of days and tomorrow it will be clinic day, then home and it might warm up first of the week again, I think I heard.