Introducing the Central Park Colony: Trapping Cats and Other Wildlife

Karen K. contacted me at the beginning of this month about TNR for the cats living in her next door neighbor’s garage in Logan Square.

The colony is made up of a mama cat with her four kittens, although the kittens are now already almost grown. Karen was worried about the cats because neighbors were complaining about them pooping in their yard, and that there would be more litters soon.

After making sure Karen was feeding the cats on a schedule, she stopped feeding for a day or two. Kim and I started trapping them last Saturday, meeting up at 6am to set up and bait the traps.

This is the garage with a huge hole on its side that the cats all live in. Throughout that day, we trapped all five of the cats. At one point, Karen even trapped a black squirrel, and let her out. I would’ve loved to see that! We kept trying to trap early Sunday morning before PAWS’ clinic opened to get them TNR’d, because we knew obviously there is a papa cat out there.

When I showed up at 5am on Sunday, a raccoon appeared on top of the garage above my head.

This raccoon was bold! He climbed down and kept trying to go in the traps as I was baiting them with sardines. I’ve never seen anything like it.

When Kim came to check on the traps later all of the sardines were gone, but the traps were still open. The raccoon knew how to eat the bait without setting off the traps!

In the end we still had five cats ready for their TNR treatment at PAWS’ clinic.

Queens is the beautiful queen mama cat.

And then we trapped the rest of her family. Here is Manhattan, female.

Bronx, also female.

Brooklyn, female.

And Harlem, the one male. He would’ve had quite the harem if this colony was not TNR’d.

All of the cats went to PAWS’ clinic for TNR last Sunday, and have been recovered and TNReturned. Karen will let us know if any other cats show up in this area.