Success!

 I caught Chaos today.

He's the home invader guy.

He's sleeping in a trap right now, like he's worn out from the ordeal of the last 9 or 10 days.  I can't imagine its been easy.  My cats can be jerks to newcomers, especially boys, especially unfixed boys.  So he's probably not gotten a lot of shut eye.

I wanted to catch him before the rain starts tomorrow.  We're supposed to have another very wet couple of days.  Won't help much with mountain snow although we're supposed to get some.   Snow pack is like at 8% of normal in our region, the Willamette Basin.   

We've had a lot of rain, but the snow pack is our "reservoir, for the summer.

I started out with my attempt today to catch Chaos by setting two traps facing one another in the only real exit from the outside cat yard cat house.  However, he immediatley leaped up to a hole near the top of it, which I hadn't blocked and made his escape into the cat yard.  I went outside then and closed off the cat run to the house from the cat yard.  I have to do that from outside.

When I got back in the cat yard, I couldn't find him anywhere.   I searched inside the garage cat room but didn't see him there, then searched the house.  My cats were in a tizzy over all this.  Finally I went back to the garage cat room and there he was, hiding in a carrier.  But that carrier has no door, so I couldn't just close him in it.   I got a small trap and put the traps' raisable backdoor up against the front of the carrier he was hiding in.  With a little prodding, he exited the carrier into the trap.   

Finally!   

Then I had to put back together everything I'd taken apart to look for him out in the cat yard, open the cat runs, take the traps back inside I'd had out.  Lots of work.  But he's caught and going to the vet tomorrow.

I had two people volunteer to help but one is in eastern Oregon currently and the other has young kids to care for.   I knew i had to get it done so I did.

He'll be checked for a chip and neutered if he isn't which I don't think he is.  But I"m not reaching into the trap to check.  No one seems to be looking for him.  There's a colony not far from here, I found out, and he may be part of it.  That would explain things.  Like the fact nobody is looking for him.

As if the high gas and food prices aren't enough, Pacific Power, the electric company, is raising rates again, starting tomorrow, by about 5%.  Seriously?   

Gosh darn anyhow.

Here's Chaos, now contained, and very very sleepy.  He seems extremely relieved to be out of the cat yard.

I'll let him go again outside once the rains quit, which is supposed to be Friday.  If he doesn't have people to care for him, wherever he came from, he knows where I live, and he knows how to get back in too, if he wants to.