If you can swing it, I highly recommend buying your own humane Tru Catch traps for TNR projects. You can try to fundraise specifically for them, and they are also on sale at certain times of the year.

It’s almost impossible to rent out a bunch of traps quickly in Chicago, and when you’re starting to trap a new colony, it’s a lot easier to trap a colony all at once, instead of one or two cats at a time. On average, a colony here in Humboldt Park is around 8-12 cats before TNR, in most alleys with a feeder. Sometimes a colony can be only 2-3 cats, or up to two dozen. One or two may be pregnant. A few cats may be sick. And there may be a few kittens that need to be socialized ASAP. The weather could change and make it impossible to trap. Also, a feeder sometimes changes their mind if the trapping process is taking too long. Time is of the essence with TNR. It helps to be prepared.

I learned all of that once I started TNR’ing for other people. It became apparent very quickly that it was easier for me to show up with enough traps for all of the cats quickly after I first talked to the feeder. That way they didn’t even have time to hesitate. I bought my first round of traps.

And expanded from there, including the Fat Cat Trap that Mooha was happy to demonstrate.

And now I have a decent supply of traps ready for use anytime in the garage.

In the meantime I also always stockpile carriers, newspapers, various bait, feeding lids/bowls, trap covers, blankets and towels in the garage for these projects.

Everything came in handy last night – I helped TNR a colony with two other rescue friends, Heather and Melissa. The colony is a mix of 17 cats and kittens. Armando, the feeder, also came out to help, and the process went quickly. We trapped nine cats within an hour. The rest of the colony is made up of seven kittens just a few weeks old that require additional vet care. We just learned about this colony a few days ago, and decided to go for it immediately because we were told some of the cats were pregnant. Being prepared with our own supplies paid off.

My friends and bandmates met up with Lil Bub and her family today.

They were recording an album for their band, French Goodbye, in Lil Bub’s recording studio.

They also met Cooper there, another studio cat.

“Who’s Lil Bub?”

These past few weeks there has been a few deaths from the colonies. Dice was euthanized. Betty was found dead in her backyard.

This can be difficult, but at least we know what happened to these cats.

One of the hardest things for a feral cat colony caregiver to deal with is the “unknown.” It really sucks when a cat “disappears.”

Of course, that is part of being a caregiver. Cats disappear sometimes, and all you can do is hope that perhaps the cat was scooped up and adopted indoors by another person (yeah, that sounds like a fantasy, but sometimes, the TNR’d, ear tipped cats show up later with a collar on), or, more likely, if they died, there was little unnecessary suffering involved.

It’s one of the reasons that I will never understand how people can let their pet cats in and out, especially in a heavy urban environment such as Chicago, where pretty much anything can happen. Once a cat leaves their property, they are fair game, legally and realistically. Cats can get poisoned, hit by cars, claimed without recourse by another person, tortured, or just wander off forever. Cats who are socialized to humans are especially susceptible to such danger. Feral cats are more savvy, as the adult ones outside are truly the fittest and strongest from their litters. They know the streets and know to be wary of danger. After all, they’ve made it this far. The outdoors are their true home and they know how to navigate it and survive.

Noche Nariz was a black and white cat with a distinctive black nose from the Jose and the Pussycats Colony, the same colony where Betty was from.

This colony is mostly made up of TNR’d black cats, so cats like him and Betty were very visible from the start. 

Noche hung out on Maria’s steps ever since I TNR’d him in 2010, waiting for dinner.

I wouldn’t call him friendly, exactly, but he was acclimated to his territory at Maria’s house, and the three other houses next door where the rest of her family and neighbors live who also feed the cats. He did not flinch or move from his hangouts when you passed him on the sidewalk. Instead, he would pose beautifully.

During the winter, he was one of the few cats from the colony that actually used the outdoor cat shelters his feeders made for him in their backyard.

When I was talking to Maria and her family about Betty, I asked about Noche because I hadn’t seen him since the spring, after the polar vortex. Maria admitted to me she also hadn’t seen him, and had no idea what happened to him.

It kills me how many cats here seemed to make it past last year’s terrible winter, but then got sick, perished, or “disappeared,” by the time spring arrived.

There is a chance that perhaps Noche was scooped up and adopted by a neighbor that he may have bonded to. He had a tendency to hang out by people’s front doors, but so far I have no idea. 

New cat sighting!

Thankfully, these guys are indoors.

They were pretty fascinated with me and smelling the air outside.

It’s hard to keep track of the cats outside, and so many people here have in/out pet cats to add to the confusion.

But these felines are staying put indoors. They just wanted to play.