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A veterinary blog for pet lovers, vet voyeurs and the medically curious...
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As I write this, I’m being treated to the midnight sounds of outdoor kitty interactions—none of them good, you can be sure of that. The crescendo of screeches typically indicates that one of only two things is in process: fighting or mating (two non-mutually exclusive activities in the feline world, I’m afraid).
I got to thinking about my burgeoning neighborhood population of strays earlier in the evening, which is why I’m sitting out here quietly observing my Have-A-Heart trap bask idly in the moonlight, ready to spring shut should anyone venture into its gaping maw.
But nothing’s happening. Perhaps it’s true that a watched trap never slams shut—not without an unsuspecting opossum inside instead of your intended quarry.
Tonight I’m betting on the big black and white tom who’s recently taken the place of the last black and white tom I trapped last month (brothers, perhaps?). Unfortunately, the last guy was both FeLV and FIV positive, a dual designation which earned him a sad farewell (the severe stomatitis and multiple abscesses on his head and neck didn’t help his case any).
Though others may counter that life as a feral cat isn’t necessarily so rough as some may paint it, my suburban strays have almost never failed to get trapped without some major sickness in the works. Perhaps I’m just culling the weak. Who knows?
However, I am sure that my work is doing some good…no dead strays have been spotted by the roadside in a couple of weeks. That’s got to mean I’m making headway, right?
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"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
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- Mohandas Gandhi
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The feral cat population is quite large here too, and I am having to keep my cat indoors because of it, or he gets into horrible fights. Unfortunately he needs antidepressants to make it bearable for him to stay shut in. In an ideal world ...
I've got an idea for a topic: bullfighting in spain..huH?
What got me the most was that there was small children there.
Ashleigh, over the years I have trapped a few of my neighbors cats and have no qualms about neutering them just like I do with the ferals. Don't let that stop you. I'm a big fan of keeping cats inside only but either way spaying and neutering is a must if someone is letting their cats run loose, imo.
<a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1738258">Clean Kitty</a>
Covering it with a towel or a tarp also helps, so it doesn't look so trap-like.
All the cats on the farm we then lived on in rural Australia were being beaten up and terrorized by a huge feral tom which had moved in from the bush. It was probably a matter of time before the beast started on the farm dogs as well.
So we set up a trap on our back verandah from where he had been helping himself to our cat’s food for a couple of weeks. Within minutes he was in the trap and totally furious – we could hear the trap bucking about on the floor boards. We stepped out the back door to see what we’d caught. The great, burley beast took one look at us, turned tail and blasted his way straight out the back of the trap. He must have been able to push the walls of the trap apart in the corner. The trap was completely undamaged – it just sprang back into shape and we were left wondering for a moment if we’d imagined the entire episode! I couldn’t flex the walls of the trap apart more than ¼ of an inch with my hands so the power of that animal must have been awesome.
Anyway, we beefed the trap up with (lots of) fencing wire and reset it. We wondered if Moggizilla would be willing to go in again after his first experience but we needn’t have worried; he was by now more confident than ever and this time we got him, and held him. He was an absolute monster of a thing with a big muscular, wedge-shaped head. He looked more like a cross between a panther and a wild boar than any domestic cat. His demeanor to the end was that of one for whom brute force and a bad attitude had always served well.
The big, tough stockman who came to shoot him (clean headshot with a .22 rifle) was really quite intimidated by the cat’s menacing growls and glowering malevolence – and he checked very carefully that the cat was indeed dead before he opened that trap.
BTW “Moggy” is a British (and Australian) slang term for a cat, usually referring to a cat of no particular breeding.
Alison