Trapping Cats Without a Regular Feeding Schedule

Ever since the cat owners of the hoarder/drug house moved out at the end of June and dumped a bunch of cats outside I’ve been seeing the cats around the neighborhood. But it’s hard to keep track – some stayed near that house, and others roamed to find other feeders in our neighborhood.

I’m hoping some of those cats will find the cat cafe I’ve had set up in my front yard since last fall. Funny Face is absolutely obsessed with it.

Last week I started putting the food in a Tru-Catch trap zip-tied open to acclimate the cats to the trap. When I came home from my trip to Amsterdam last night, I decided to give it a shot. I took off the zip-ties and put the trap in the same position using the same dry food as I normally do to feed the cats, nothing different or fancy to avoid making them suspicious.

Funny Face came out again and again to look at it, as if he was warning the other cats to stay away. Either that, or he just really wanted the food, but knew better than to go in the trap again. And then it rained really hard for awhile. I was thinking my plan wouldn’t work at all.

I set my alarm and checked the trap throughout the night anyways.

At 7am there was finally a cat in a trap. He acted like a typical feral cat: growling and refusing to look at me. I took a few photos of him and started getting ready to take him to the clinic for his TNR treatment, until I looked a little more closely at the photos. And then I went out to look at him more closely again. And again. I was so jet lagged I did not see the ear tip, and then when I did, I was still confused. But at least I figured it out before I did anything else.

And also, I had to give myself a pat on the back if I’m re-trapping cats here that are already TNR’d. TNR works!

Here he is, very clearly ear tipped. Yup, pretty obvious, right? Being jet lagged is worse than being drunk sometimes. Tell-tale sign of a feral cat: they avoid eye contact.