How to catch a cat.....or not
Many of you will have read and chuckled over the legend which does the rounds, on how to catch a cat (for example to go to the vet) and the lengths they will go to to evade capture let alone what damage to you and your home will, not may, ensue. And all that presupposes it is a) your cat and therefore nominally used to being handled and b) in an enclosed area, ie your house.
Catching cats in Spain is a different matter entirely since it mostly involves trapping an unwilling and definitely not tame feline and outdoors to boot. It makes the former sound like a picnic by comparison. In fact the former can well be a picnic by comparison. A cat trap is a long wire cage with a trapdoor one end and a plate as the far end attached to a wire which in turn supports the door when raised, and treading on the trip plate pulls the wire off the door lever and the door drops down into place. Bingo, one trapped cat. Who promptly goes into orbit and bounces off all available walls hissing spitting and exuding murderous intentions to anyone foolish enough to get with paw and claw range of the mesh. So watch out when you go for the handle to pick it up. But I digress, as first you have to tempt the bugger in there, and I might add, the ONE YOU WANT in there.
So imagine, identify a suitable area where the cat will go. The trap has to be baited (only one cat foolish enough to go in after toys, general practice is a tiny amount of something very tasty and preferably smelly like sardines) at the far end which for people like me means laying on the floor and putting my entire arm in. It also means doing so sufficiently gently not to set off the mechanism because it's mostly easier to raise the trip plate and put in the food than to put in the food and raise the trip plate sending the food scudding off who knows which direction and usually ending upside down under the trip plate. Then, you wait, but not where you can seen or you will frighten them off, but not too far away that you forget all about it and find one of your cats in there for an hour and very very cross about it, so the distance has to be ideal for speedy release of wrong parties. Or within earshot to hear a) the clanging of the door and/or b) the anguished wailing which normally follows along with c) the sound of a metal cage being more or less knocked over by someone trying to get out. See previous paragraph for description of typical trapped cat behaviour and also warning re fingers, legs and anything else within paw/claw reach. Cover up entire cage to quieten the captive and search for the handle without getting under the cover and losing a finger or two. Endeavour to lug heavy metal cage containing cat to wherever your car is and attempt to fit it in and drive rapidly to the vet. Lug the trap and contents in, hand it over and breathe a massive sigh of relief that paying for this is going to be preferable to having to try to get the bugger out and onto a operating table. Go home and lie down. You see there are some similarities to that How to Catch a Cat thing after all........
Sounds ok so far? But consider this, when chasing a cat round your house shutting doors as you go not only restricts the available area but generally involves one identified animal. Now try putting a trap on your terrace when you have (quick count) 9 cats of your own none of whom need to be neutered, and another 9 or 10 who are not really yours but think they own you too. All of whom DO need the snip (apart from the one daft enough to go after a cat toy in the trap before he was old enough to know better) although the youngest 3 are probably safe fro another months or so yet. So whilst the priority will always be girls first before they turn into Patch (well Patch is actually no. 1 on the hit list for the trap but far too canny to fall for it), what are the odds when the present targets include only one known female other than Patch? And if you trap later in the day then the cat would have to stay in the trap all night and the next morning, which hardly seems fair let alone likely to end well if they remember afterwards.
Cats are curious animals and are likely to investigate something new, and interesting food smells, but when they see what happens to one of their number in a trap, they run a mile and it's hard work persuading them to come near it again, let alone the effect on those who didn't even need to go in it in the first place, and mine are both curious AND a bunch of gannets.
If that was not enough of a problem, try adding this in : the vets normally operate afternoons when the surgery is closed, so you need to get the cat there before 1.30 which means a morning capture. So weekends are out (Sat no evening surgery and Sunday closed), on Tuesdays I am not there either to trap or deliver, which leaves Monday Wednesday THursday and Friday and then only if nothing else needs doing which would stop me, then there may well be too many already booked in or emergencies. The day I caught Cheeky and took him in, feeling very pleased with myself, I was greeted by the receptionist who said they might not be able to fit him in, my face must have been a picture. You can't guarantee when you will actually succeed so you can't book them in or plan when...............
Anyway, that's the reason for dilly-dallying over the trapping business really, it's not that easy and you can easily find reasons why today is not the day. I'd digress by mentioning the nightmare which was trapping the original Sooty and her four kids who were all feral but you can read about that elsewhere anyway, suffice it to say it was a nightmare but nothing like the present problem in terms of numbers or variety. And the point of telling you all this, is that yesterday, much to my amazement, I trapped Sparky who is the one known girly apart from her mum (Patch) and I wasn't even trying. This is how that happened : she's of an age where if we didn't get things done there would surely be kittens, and given how much time Horace has spent following her around, I thought sooner rather than later. Then that big black tom cat who hangs around and fights with all my cats has been yowling as well as pursuing her and she has been unusually skittish. He (the would-be rapist) has a hurt leg and is limping badly which made me think yesterday that perhaps getting him would be a good idea as the leg needs attention plus having his nuts off might give Sparky a break, plus catching her was bound to be harder anyway........so I baited the trap and put it away from the terrace and outside the window of the disused olive press which is where he'd been hanging out. Imagine my surprise when Sparky went to have a look at it and went in......I held my breath, and clang, there she was.........and she pinged off all the walls and I covered her up and sprayed the happy cat spray and tried to get hold of the handle without losing any blood and then struggled to get the trap in the van and to the vet, and then we had to decant her into a smaller crate for overnight as I was keen to take the trap back and try for the tom cat today...........and she's now in the spare room (Oliver has had to go to bed early today to give her some space) while the drugs wear off, but as yet she must be really woozy still as I can't hear any sounds of distress or destruction. She does come indoors, as they all do, but isn't used to it, so this is make or break time for whether she is going to do like Nelson and turn tame or whether she will race away as soon as possible and hate me for a lot longer like Smoke and Stumpy did, and those three had to be caught again for moving house not once but twice and only since we came to this house did Smokie decide to turn tame, poor Stumpy died still hating me). I forgot to mention in the sequence of things once the trap was covered and liberally sprayed with Feliway, I found Smokie rolling on the end of the blanket looking deliriously happy, and had to fend off various other people who came to investigate before I got the trap in the car, not least of which was the black tom cat yowling his head off no doubt looking for her again.
The post script to all this is, of course, that the black tom cat hasn't gone anywhere near the perishing trap all day and I can't leave it open all night in case the wrong person goes in........and the reason he hasn't gone back to his stamping ground is revealed in the next blog, in which yet again I have to acknowledge this lot have me for a mug. I don't know about catching cats, but those cats know how to catch a human.