Cat cam!

See the bee on the "lip" of the cup of tuna?

Must see TV (actually, this is video input to the computer).
Here, kitty, kitty, kitty...

Still no sight of the kittens, but Ed and I are having fun with the camera Ed rubber-banded to the trap.

We're going to try for about a week and then return the trap. We can always get it back, if we need it. I'm discouraged that we can't get the kittens, but Ed points out that getting Mama Cat spayed will prevent perhaps thousands of unwanted kittens from being born. He also reminds me that we can't save them all, even if we had all the money in the world. I wish I could.

Mama Cat at the vet

This is Mama Cat at the vet. She's going to be in isolation until Monday.

At that time, they'll sedate her, bathe her, examine her, and test her for feline leukemia and AIDS. If she tests negative for feline leukemia and AIDS, they'll spay her while she's still sedated and keep her for a couple of days to recuperate. (If she tests positive, we'll have her euthanized, for her best interest and for the health and safety of other cats in the neighborhood, both pets and strays.)

If she is healthy, we'll release her in our yard. She's just too wild to rehabilitate. I was hoping this wouldn't be the case, but it is. If our neighbors don't want to feed her anymore because she's not raising kittens, Ed and I will be responsible for feeding her for the rest of her life. I don't like feeding "strays," but because we've made this choice for her, we need to make sure she stays fed. I don't expect we'll ever try to trap her again.

I'm relieved she's at the vet. They can take far better care of her than we can. I had a very difficult time putting food/water/litter in the box, and she knocked it over quite easily. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say she made a MESS in her crate in the 18 hours she was there.

As for the kittens, we've not seen a trace of them. It's rainy today, so we'll wait to try trapping them until tomorrow. Ed doubts we'll manage to get any of them, but if we do, we'll go through all this again.

I didn't think it was possible to have any more respect for people who do rescue as a full-time, yet extremely low-paying job, but I do. God bless 'em.

Rebecca, Cat Wrangler

Today, Ed and I started trapping a mother cat and her kittens. (We think there are four babies, but we're not sure.) We're going to get them spayed/neutered and either adopt them out or release them back in our neighborhood. (Believe it or not, with feral cats, this is the best option if they're not able to be tamed.)

Ed put a camera on the back of the trap and we watched on t.v. After a slight "tweak" we trapped Mama Cat in about five minutes. Here's a picture I took of the t.v. image of Cat Cam. Loving the digital camera.