A sneaky fellow

'Tis the season for female kitties to be led astray. I know this because unknown tomcats have begun to arrive on our property. I've been feeding three near-feral females, a mother and her two half-grown daughters, for several months now. I've known this time is coming when I'd have to get serious about taking them to the vet and it has arrived.

Mother cat, Sister I call her, has now disappeared. She is, no doubt, being bad (or doing what comes natural to a cat, my husband reminds me) with the neighborhood boys who have also disappeared. Of her two daughters, I can pet one and she, unsuspecting darling, let me pick her up yesterday and put her in a carrier. She is now awaiting her surgery so she can become a responsible member of the kitty community: all sleep and rodent-catching, no procreation. She will, however, probably never allow me near her again. It is a price we will both pay.

The other daughter is skittish and I will have to trap her, as I will her mother. Which bring us to the subject at hand, my latest trapping adventure.

So far, I've caught my own outdoor, neutered, sweet as they come, but not particularly bright, yellow cat. I've lost track of how many times he's wandered into my traps. One of these days, Sam may make a more fatal error and get caught in someone else's. He just needs to learn to stay on property.

Sam, though, is not the problem. The problem is whoever is going into the trap, eating the cat food, and getting out without being caught! He's done it three times! My husband thinks this is quite funny. (And so he can keep thinking until we have another batch of kittens.) Therefore, I've gone into the trapping archives and pulled out the trick which I used to catch my first raccoon: a pork rib tied top and bottom to the trap.

It's out there now. I'll let you know who the sneaky fellow is.

One missing Ms. Adventure

The end of June I blogged about Two Wet Little Kittens and their sister who stayed calmly in the back yard and watched as they were "watered out" of the carriage of the spouse's pickup truck. In the weeks following she has been the one to approach her breakfast even as I have stood on the back steps watching. She has been the one to roam the back yard while not under her mother's watchful eye. She has held promise of being a keeper-kitty, one who, once spayed and vaccinated, will stay put and catch mice and all sorts of bad critters. I named her Ms. Adventure.

And now she's missing.

I didn't see any of them for several days, then mom-cat showed back up for a free meal. In her wake were the two siblings, but no gray kitty wanting to get into trouble.

For it's trouble she must have found. I haven't seen her since last week and I fear Ms. Adventure has suffered a misadventure. It's a hard life for an outdoor kitty without a formal home and my two spoiled indoor darlings know nothing about it.

I won't give up looking for her, hoping she bounds out from behind a flower pot very soon.

The saga continues

Duchess, mama cat in the previous entry, has moved her kittens once again, this time to the dubious place between the a/c units. It is probably easier to defend than the bushes, being in an L-shaped area, but is concrete and not soft dirt. She has all four of them with her and she has ventured no further than the driveway in 3 days. I have not seen the big tom that caused her anxiety earlier.

I am using a hands-off approach, although I will eventually have to capture the little darlings. I was hoping she would grab them up and find a new home for them as she did with last year's brood. I have even emailed friends and loops to advertise their availability. Amazingly, no one has replied in the affirmative.

This is not looking good.

Do I have what it takes?

A year ago yesterday I blogged about Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor and the fact that the second season was being elusive. The third season started a few weeks ago and we are once again attentive. But this year is harder: bad things are happening to our Whiskers family and the other meeerkat groups. It's a meerkat-kill-meerkat world in the Kalahari where survival is all we have on our minds.

So, how do the teams of researchers and film makers handle it? They set the cameras up and let them roll, let Nature and meerkat take their courses. There's even a disclaimer to that fact at the beginning of the half-hour. Meerkat Manor is not for the faint-hearted.

Our backyard is a crossroads for the feline population. Two years ago I adopted a stray kitty who was being abused monthly by the neighborhood tomcats. It took me two months of bribing her with food to get her close enough to the house to trap her. I had her spayed and inoculated. Amazingly, when I returned her to the backyard, she got over her snit and has stayed with me, finally allowing me to stroke her back and scratch behind her ears.

All was well, just she and me, until said neighborhood toms noticed where the freebie food was. Over the course of the last year, they all stop by for breakfast. They'll laze in the garden or on the furniture. They are, for tomcats, well-mannered. I do not attempt to adopt them.

There is also a female in the group, a calico we've named Duchess. I think she originated across the street because she wanders from food bowl to food bowl. She is in the family way every chance she gets. Last year, she wore herself out ferrying kittens between my house and her official home. Neither human could grab her and see that she ceased her prolific ways.

This years has been no different, although she no longer runs from me. I have hopes of nabbing her when her litter (location unknown until an hour ago) is large enough not to need her.

From my study window, I look down onto the backyard. And who should I see clutching a kitten in her mouth and disappearing under the lantana but Duchess. And who is entering the yard right behind her? A tom. He took her exact path to the bushes and stopped. I'd no doubt Duchess would defind her litter, but for how long could she hold out? He marked the bushes by spraying and then left. She emerged and took up a sentinel position.

I could stand it no longer, so I went down. She was now on the back steps. I gave her food and scurried over to check on the kittens. Last week there had been four of them when she'd given them a temporary stop in the rose bushes (the sprinkler system flushed them out on Monday morning). Today there are three. Has one died? Is she waiting for an all-clear to go get it?

Can I stand by and watch tomcats circling her litter and not interfere? Should Nature take its course? Duchess is not a first-time mama and she is bound to be savvier about the location of her 6 week old brood than I am, but do I have what it takes to be an impartial observer?