More Shedd Success

About the best news ever!   Four days of sun in store, starting today.  By Sunday, the high is back in the 50's, but we get four great days!!!!!  This will be our first day since last October of over 70 degrees.

Oops!  Update:  Orange tabby on white female had kittens on the way to Portland in the live trap, two by the time she got to FCCO.  She and her kittens, and any more that will be born, are now at a vet hospital where Dr. Jessica works, who is the vet for Northwest Animal Companions and that's where they'll remain in foster care.

 I went back to Shedd yesterday.  I arrived about 4:00 p.m. intent on catching any others I saw needing fixed.

I should have not been surprised to "wake up" from texting another Portland trapper, to spot what looked like a tabby beside the drop trap.  I had already been there a long time and seen nobody else without an eartip.  This wasn't a tabby however, it was a torbi.  "Torbi" is a coloration description of a cat striped like a tabby, but with torti colorations too.  They are always females.

Oh shoot, I thought, and straightened up, stopped texting, and watched, hoping she would go under the drop trap.   I remembered suddenly she was on my list, months ago, seen once before, only once, and when I never saw her again, I thought I must have been mistaken and it must have been the large fixed torbi I'd seen.

Under the drop trap she went finally and I yanked it down over her, with a pull of the string attached to its stand.  It was windy by then and getting the cover over the drop trap, to calm the cat before transfer to a live trap wasn't as quick as it could have been.  She got her claws through the mesh while I was doing it, and into two of my fingers, drawing blood.

 

But she is off to be fixed this morning, along with a tabby boy and the orange tabby on white girl.  

But after I'd caught her I began to wonder about Mister Gray.  Mister Gray looks like he has an ear tip and the caretaker lady was sure there was only one gray cat, who got fixed a few months back.  

Mister Gray had been wandering around from the barn to the chicken coop, just all over and I thought is he hungry or what.   

But then suddenly he came much closer and with my binoculars I studied the "eartip".  The ear tip was more like a torn ear.  Sure looks like an ear tip.  But then, as fate would have it, a second gray cat, obviously the one fixed previously, wandered out of the chicken coop.   Oh shoot, I thought. 

 It was almost dark.  I put out the remote control trap by the barn quickly, because the day before, when I was after the orange and white female, he'd been in and out of that trap, no problem. At least I think it was him and not the for sure fixed one. Little hard to tell apart from a long distance.  I knew he'd go in if he saw it, to eat.

But, by this time, he was busy chasing an already fixed muted calico.  Rape on his mind, no doubt.  Here is a video Mrs. Gray, definitely the one fixed months ago, and a female.

And here is Mister Gray, in the video below, a boy, torn right ear top, that makes it look like its tipped, from a distance.

I've taken in only one gray cat to be fixed from this location however.

I remember I'd been confused, when the caretakers daughter checked the FCCO records she got after coming home with some of the cats I'd trapped and told me the gray one was a female, when I'd seen the cat spray marking all over the place.   We both figured the cat either had urinary issues or the records got mixed.  

I never caught Mister Gray last night, because it got dark and I could not even see the trap.

I'd like to catch him to be fixed for the sake of all the other cats out there he hassles and chases.

I am so happy about the two girls getting fixed.  I don't have to worry at least about kittens being born, unless one of the two is lactating.  I'll get Mister Gray at some point.

AND THE SUN IS BACK!