Shelter me!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

I released the feral cat two days ago (on Thursday, April 9th). It was the first really beautiful day that we have had in a while. The cat had finished taking her medication. She was snarling at me a little more than usual . She had begun trashing her cage every single night (instead of just occasionally).  And now, when she tossed her food dish into her bed, I could see that it had been full of dry food. She was sick and tired of hanging around the cage. She wanted out and I couldn’t blame her.

The problem was that I could not figure out how to let her go. The best course of action is to release wild cats where they have been trapped. That would certainly make it easier for for my feral cat to find her way home. But I didn’t have the training or the equipment to safely remove her from the cage.

I called Cindy, my friend at Charles River Alley Cats, for advice. Cindy is well known for helping people figure out what to do in these situations. She is also a really sweet person. She came over at the end of the day with a special carrier that had a latch door that moves vertically. She positioned the trap against the door of the acclimation cage while I held the latch door open. If/when the cat ran into the cage, I would drop the latch door and the trap would be shut.

This cat was not at all pleased about entering the portable carrier.  As Cindy spoke to her and prodded her very gently, the cat moved frantically, up, down and around the acclimation cage, almost like a spider and just as blind to our presence.  It was literally the first time I could see the whole cat. For the two and half weeks she had been in the cage on my porch, she had rarely moved in my presence. I could finally see she was a bobtail. 

After a valiant fight she gave up and bolted into the carrier. I may have been more relieved than the cat to see the end of this encounter.

Cindy and I walked several blocks together, over to the house where I understood that feral cats lived. We went into the driveway. It was full of all kinds of stuff; empty garbage cans and rusty bits of dead machinery. All things considered, it looked like a darn good place to let a feral cat go. The moment Cindy opened the cage,  the cat ran out and disappeared. Sometimes cats are so freaked out when they are in a trap, they are afraid to move. That didn’t happen with our cat. We had brought her home and she knew it. I opened a few cans of Friskies and left them as a sort of goodbye gift. A black & white cat, a big one, was watching us in the back of the yard.

I thought we had done a good job. But it wasn’t over for Cindy. She was worried about the kittens that our cat was reported to have had about 12 weeks ago - confirmed by my vet - and by the storekeeper who seemed to have known nearly everything worth knowing about this feral cat colony.  If at all possible, Cindy wanted to catch the kittens and spay/neuter them and return them. We were not there yet.