Last night the girls and I went out for a feral cat trapping hunt. We started on Dean Street. When we pulled up, there was one cat just kind of laying out. I think he was trying to cool off by stretching out on the sidewalk. We put out the trap and he went in, like a good boy. But the trigger didn't go off and we had to watch with baited breath. He caught sight of us and actually shifted weight to go back to eating. Then bam, the trap closed. His face was like "What the hell was that? Oh, damn I'm trapped in here!" I've never actually seen them get trapped like that before. We usually have more than one trap out and need to just let them "soak" (as they say on Deadliest Catch). Anyway, we set out like 4 more, but only got 2 out of that.
Then we moved to Pacific and put down 3 traps. There was a tom boy and possibly a female, and then a little kitty came out (maybe like 3 months). Also the neighbors came out to ask what we were doing. I can only imagine what it looks like for 3 girls to be out at like 9 PM riding around in a Volvo (borrowed from a fellow cat lady) with steel traps and cans of tuna. I always love the question, "What are you going to do with the trapped cats?" I want to say "eat them in a stew with carrots", but that might be too sarcastic. At least they care. So one neighbor lady led us to a cat in their front stoop area. That kitty was easy, pick up and put in trap. All skin and bones. She'll be living large for a few days at least.
We were able to trap the 2 cats, but not the little kitty. That will be an early quick trap today. As we drove towards home, heading back on Dean, there was another black/white cat laying out on the sidewalk. We slowed down, made a plan and set the trap. He wasn't thrilled about the steel trap, so we had to do the drop trap. Took a little time, but he went in and started to chow down. In the end we got 7 cats in 1 night. The cat-girl doing this project got a total of 19 cats in like 3-4 days. That is totally insane! And can you believe we still saw cats hanging out on the sidewalk as we finally drove home (it was getting late and there is only so much you can do in one night).
Hope they all do well for surgery on Friday.
