Trapping in winter

Well, the cats (or at least one) are still there. They have lived under a house that is being sold. The area under the house is to be repaired and they will have no place to live. The Realtor (a true cat lover, who I expect is the sort of person who puts herself on the line for humans as well) called for help in catching them. A relative of the home seller was to feed them (and I should have called her to be sure) until I could find a barn home for them. But she was unable to.

Feeding cats before setting traps makes the actual trapping go more quickly. The cats learn to visit frequently, and become comfortable eating there. They'll go into traps without a problem. But when they aren't fed regularly, they have to range to find food or hunt. They may spend their evenings in other buildings or afield. So they are harder to catch (more to follow). 


Trapping in winter has some problems. Wet bait may freeze, and the odor of dry food doesn't go very far. So I use a bowl of dry so the cat (if used to being fed in a bowl) gets the visual of food, and put wet food or sardines on top. These, however, can freeze, and no cat is going to walk into a strange trap for a chunk of frozen nothingness. So we use the dry food, and put a little sardine oil on one of those handwarmers (which I buy on sale when I see them) and this stays warm for about five hours. They say they are non-toxic, but to tell the truth, I've never even had a cat try to chew on one, even when they've eaten all the other bait in the traps. Perhaps I'll eat those words myself some day, but so far we've had no problems. So if it's very cold, and the bait freezes, hopefully the cat will see the food and smell the oil on the warm pack, and walk into the trap.


Yum! 


If the traps are left unattended at all, even just for a short while, the cat has to be protected. So the trap is inserted in a plastic bag to cut the wind and keep the cat dry, and the whole thing wrapped in a blanket. It must be in a protected area, and luckily for me these cats were living under a covered deck. 

I set the traps this afternoon, but they weren't tripped by late afternoon, or by evening when I drove back. There were no new cat tracks, so it wasn't that the cat had refused the trap. He just hasn't returned. So I'll try again tomorrow, with fresh bait.

I did find a barn home for these cats if they turn out to be feral, with a friend who had mentioned a time ago he would like more barn cats. Once they are caught, I'll call the SPCA to report them as found, in case someone else is feeding them and reports them lost. I usually check with nearest neighbors, or track the cats to see what other porches they may be visiting.

Snow is a wonderful thing.

In this case if the cats turn out to be cared for by someone else, I would get the cats fixed, wait until the deck hole is fixed, then return them with a shelter to their caregiver. If they are tame, I'll look for possible owners, and then either find them a home, or place them with another adoption program. Because these are what I would call "loosely owned" cats, I make an effort to see if someone else might be caring for them as well. I've run into colonies where the cats lived on two different back porches...and even had different names! Once one person starts fixing and eartipping the cats, the second person starts checking around and discovers "his" cats also belong to "her." Funny. And far better than having no caretaker at all.

If they are feral and they don't have a caregiver, they'll be relocated to Matt's farm. In that case they'll need to be FeLV/FIV tested as well as neutered and vaccinated as he has one friendly barn cat there now.

So, we'll see what tomorrow brings.