8 1/2 Hours

 Sure happy I gave myself 2 days to catch four more cats at the Shedd colony.

It was frozen everywhere yesterday morning and it took til nearly 10 to get up to freezing.  So I headed down to the colony about 10.

8 1/2 hours later, barely able to feel my feet anymore, from cold, I left, with only three cats.

I became quickly frustrated again with the nutria population.  They would head straight under the drop trap, to eat, over and over again.  They were aggressive, chasing the cats from the food.   I finally was able to catch one cat under the drop trap, a buff male.  But I knew this was really a no go, with all these f@@king nutes, already expecting cat food every morning, as they have for years on end there.

They also would try to go into live traps, if set on the ground.   This is a pain in the butt.  It's hard enough to catch the unfixed ones in such a huge colony, let alone if you are battling trap happy fearless nutria, some of them monsters over 20 lbs.

I went out to the barn finally and caught a second male, this one large.  He'd been on the roof of the barn, after an orange and white female.  Four other boys were also going after her, but they are all fixed, they just don't know it yet.

There was a lot of that going on yesterday too, boys fighting, boys chasing little teenage girls all over.   One of the girls finally took refuge atop a fence post to get away.

I had thought she was the one I caught last, using my remote attached to a trap 150 feet away from me.   By this time, darkness was falling and I could barely see the trap.  I was really after a large muted torti tux.  After I compared the photo of the one I caught to this photo of the girl on the post, whom I knew to be the inheat girl, I realized the one I caught is not the girl.  At least, not the same girl.

Here is the one I caught.

Orange and white, to be fixed Friday

Here are the other two, both males.

A bald eagle soared over and landed atop a nearby tree, where he or she sat for quite some time, before taking off  and heading west.  After an hour, back he flew over the area but continued east and did not again land atop the redwood.

The Eagle atop the tree with cats not far below near the brush

I know for some reason I got it in my head there are six unfixed females left.  I know there are two muted torti tuxes, a straight muted torti, a young torbi tux, the orange and white being pursued yesterday.  But that's five.  I think the sixth I counted might be an iffy one, a torbi, but not a torbi tux, small, that comes from the road side, when I've seen her, which is only twice, so I'm not quite sure.  I know there's dirty tail left to catch too, in the boy department and a teen, but I think there are others.   

Here's the large muted torti tux I was after yesterday.

I took a small bag, what was left in it, of carrots for nute distraction.  But each nute can daily eat a quarter of its body weight and besides they like cat food better than vegetables.   This small nute liked the carrots.