As I mentioned in previous articles, I occasionally help out my friend Markéta, who runs a cat shelter. I had the opportunity to take part in several humane trappings for stray cats and would like to share the experience with you today.
The first time I took part in a humane trapping was when an elderly lady called the shelter to ask us to catch the stray cats on the grounds of one hospital in Prague. There were a lot of them and the lady came there to feed them (although forbidden by the hospital staff), only her legs were now in bad shape and she was worried they wouldn’t survive without her help.
So we packed up a small elongated cage where the doors swing shut after stepping inside, a landing net, crates, packets of food and headed to the hospital complex. The lady showed us when and where the cats move around (naturally during feeding time) and posted ourselves there. You really need strong nerves and lots of patience to get cats in a cage. The only thing you can do is to set the cage down, put the most aromatic food inside it, move away and wait and wait and wait.
You can wait almost an hour before a cat even comes close to the cage. They circle around it suspiciously, sniffing and checking everything out. The more cautious ones don’t dare go inside the cage and ignore the food, but the naïve and less experienced ones finally crawled inside and the doors slammed shut behind him. That’s when the fun stuff really started, trying to get the cat out of the cage and into the crate. Outdoor cats caught in a trap put up a fuss like the devil, scratching and biting with all their strength in trying to escape. Or they stay glued to the end of the cage and don’t move.
The problem is that once the other cats see one of their own trapped, they won’t go near the cage. And not just that day either, but never, and they teach it to their kittens as well. We saw three kittens not quite a half year old lurking around the cage sniffing the irresistible odor from inside. But right behind them was their mother and after checking it out she shooed them away from anywhere close to the hellish cage.
We also saw this older copper tomcat with a poorly healed bad leg who taught himself where not to go in order to get something good and the door never slammed shut behind him. Other cats were able to get chunks of the meat with their paws by pulling them through the wire mesh of the cage.
It’s therefore getting harder and harder to trap cats in a cage. They are quick learners and pass on their experience from generation to generation. And since we are talking about several generations living outdoors, these cats are shy and mostly never adapted to human beings.
Although we did manage to catch a few of the older kittens, after releasing them in the shelter at the end of their quarantine they immediately disappeared in the most forbidding corners and no one knew anything about them for weeks. After about a month, the corner of your eye registers them as they flit between the cages. After another month they warily move around the space but beware of the temptation to approach them. And now imagine that you need to catch them to check if they have fleas or ticks, mange in their ears and the like, to take them for an examination and vaccination. Not even a pair of welders gloves will save you then.
Such cats are difficult to place; would you want a cat that you can’t even come close to and only approaches to eat. Fortunately, even these cats find a couple who have a cottage or farm and offer them a home without any expectations. Also fortunately, not all are this wild. Many of them are used to people and like their company or else haven’t lived outside so long that they want nothing to do with people.
This is proof of another example. One day before Christmas, a small cat ran up into my arms all by herself. It was in a shelter crate and so she got the name Shipment :). And thank god for her. The drivers say that she often his in the car to get warmth from the motor in wintertime. All it would take, however, is one time where she couldn’t get out in time before starting and that could’ve been a disaster.
Trapping cats is therefore often nerve-wracking and frustrating work, but there’s a reason for it. And the feeling of satisfaction when you see a cat leave for a new home and you know all will be well for her there, then it’s simply worth it!
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