Welcome to April 1st. Can you spot the cat in this picture?
That white spot in the sea of Spring green is Mr Tom, my neighbor’s cat. He is the least camouflaged cat of all time. This is him sleeping in the edge of the wood. Sometimes he sleeps a bit farther in, but he is still easy to spot. When the trees are Winter bare, there aren’t many places in the woods where he doesn’t stand out like a feline beacon.
I managed to get five brush strokes across the back of Mr Tom’s Shadow! He still isn’t impressed, but he moves away less each time. Mr Tom loves his brushes, more than treats even, and comes up to me to demand the burrs be removed and his chin be brushed. Shadow comes up to Mr Tom to give him head bumps as I am brushing. That is when I run the brush along his back toward his tail. He moves away, but then comes back to rub against Mr Tom, and subsequently gets another brush. Here is my proof of contact; the picture below shows both white and black hair from the brush.
The cage in the second picture is for the female who hangs around with Mr Tom and his Shadow. She will only come up after I am out of reach and not looking. She still needs to be fixed.
When Mr Tom and Shadow showed up for treats (OK, Shadow comes for treats, Mr Tom comes to get brushed and de-burred), Momma cat was right behind them! She has a pink arrow in the picture pointing her out behind Shadow.
She was too skittish to eat a treat while I was there. I have the camera up, but the SD card is glitchy, so I only get a live feed, no scrolling backward through time. Still, the food I’ve put in the back of the cage has been consumed, so I hope all this will help to catch her so she can be fixed.
I’ve been making up greeting cards to sell at our local coffee shop: The Full Cup in Weatherford, TX. I have two lines: my little truck paintings, and cat photos. The cat photos are printed on 30% recycled linen paper and depict mostly feral cats that have been part of a TNR (Trap Neuter Return) program. Three are cats I have personally seen through the process, and several more are cats in Italy from when I visited in 2003. In Italy cats are protected by law. Colonies are registered and it is illegal to remove a cat from where it has chosen to live. They even have government funded neutering programs, which here we call TNR. Part of the proceeds from selling these cards will go to our local TNR programs.
Sitting in the car in my neighbor’s driveway has worked to catch 17 unfixed cats so far, but the remaining couple are elusive and wary so I have to approach in a different way. I set up a web camera behind my coop to monitor a trap.
I have a water station and insulated box behind my coop for our outdoor cat, and we have noticed that neighborhood cats from both sides also use the area. Even the elusive Momma cat. Hm. I have a trap out there, but upside down so no one gets caught without supervision (a trapped cat panics and can injure themselves if not closely monitored and swiftly covered and moved). I’ve been putting tasty morsels in there to get them used to checking for food. When we are ready to trap, I will set it and monitor through the camera, so the cats can’t see me.
Fingers crossed.
