Pam's TNR Blog Week of 10/11

10/11

No trapping for Sunday's clinic in Tempe but we did once again have too many cats. Fourteen cats had to be overnighted and taken to two clinics on Monday. I had not expected to trap that Sunday evening but a caregiver nearby who had checked out traps from me needed some handholding. Figuring this would mean just setting the traps, I agreed to come by and help. Well, little did I know this would turn in to a five day commitment! The caregiver indicated there were only three cats - but I discovered three more younger kittens had just appeared when I got there. Mom had already had two litters and this had to stop...

10/12 and 10/13

I was tired from working at the clinic all day but I caught two cats immediately that night and two more overnight. I took a total of four to the vet on 10/12 and transported home some for Suzie. I went back for the remaining two cats that night - one was the mother of the two litters. Still no luck. I set the traps and found one cat in a trap the next morning. Still no mother cat. I set traps hoping to get her overnight while the other five were recovering. I had a big job in Goodyear that night and had to be there around 6:00 PM so time was running out.

The Goodyear job was a bust. There were supposed to be 15 cats at two locations on an open city property - commercial properties being the hardest place to trap in my opinion. Grant Erhling came with me as he had wanted to go out with me on a BIG trapping job. Well, it turned out to be not too productive. We only caught three cats! There were cats there but they were not cooperating. Traps could not be left out overnight and there was no way I was driving out there in the AM. It was disappointing. I did take two traps to a lady I'd helped before in Avondale to trap two cats for the next day. So on 10/13 I took in three cats from this job and one more kitten from the other job - but still no Mom cat.

10/14

The next morning I decided to go for the next line of defense - the trusty drop-trap. I planned to release the five cats hoping Mom would come by looking for her kittens. It was time to get this little super-breeder once and for all! I could not let her have yet another litter. She was a tortie of course...a perpetual breeding machine. I waited inside the house with the string for about 1/2 hour. This time, I put an entire can of sardines under the dropper. She was very hungry by now. Finally she could resist no longer. I got her! We were very cautious in transferring her to the trap as I did not want her to escape. It was off to the vet but not before releasing the three Goodyear cats and picking up two more cats in Avondale. They were kittens when we trapped there months ago and the caregiver had them captured. Before the trip it would be back to the gas station again - Goodyear is a long way from north Phoenix. I dropped all three off at the vet and picked them up later in the day for aftercare. Then it was on to two more trapping jobs in Central Phoenix.

One was a four cats job around 36th St. and Indian School. The other was around Camelback and Central for two cats - a mother an kitten. I was helping a couple of elderly caregivers who could not do trap and transport. I caught the mother cat immediately and left the trap for the kitten before setting off for the other four cats. I had them trapped within an hour - a tortie and three orange older kittens. I went back to the other location and no kitten. So I rebaited the trap for overnight.

10/15

The caregiver called early - no kitten. However, she was out there crying for food. The kitten only had three legs and "hopped" so I think it was impossible for her to hop into the trap without shutting the door. The drop-trap to the rescue once again! I sat inside the sliding glass door waiting (at 6:30 AM). I caught her under the dropper in about 1/2 hour. I released the mother from the day before, then released the four back at the other location and then off to the vet with with the one kitten. Turned out that the mother of the three orange kittens was already eartipped! Go figure. This happens occasionally. In this case the caregivers had seen another similar looking cat about one month ago. I guess this was the "surrogate" mother. The Sunday night trapping had indeed turned in to a five day adventure!




The photo above is of the three-legged kitten in the trap before I released her on Saturday morning, 10/16. She was happy to be back with mom and fed by a nice lady who truly cared. She cared so much about them she called the SNH and had them sterilized before two cats turned in to 20 cats.

A word on Torties and Calicos. As you know they are almost all female. From my experience, there a a lot more Torties and Calicos in the feral cat population. I cannot prove this scientifically but it makes sense. They are the most wary of humans, most difficult to trap, and seem to reproduce more often. In large colonies one sees an extraordinary number of them - hence my term "breeding machines". Along with them will be a lot of orange tabby male cats which I thing they are genetically connected to - although cat genetics elude me. I've had many a sleepless night thinking about the last cat I did not catch and it is usually a Tortie or Calico that had skunked me.

Next week - National Feral Cat Day

Police to cat trapper: "Hands up and drop that fork!"

What a scare I had feeding the kitties on Sunday! As I was crouched behind the bush up against the building filling the dishes, I had no idea there was a silent alarm going off inside.

The next thing I knew, a police officer had two lanes blocked on Van Buren and was yelling at me from the curb to put my hands up! Of course I did – with a can of cat food in one hand and a fork in the other. They checked me for weapons and made me drop my fork on the ground … .

After 20 minutes or so when they decided I wasn’t a felon, the officers started giving me the lecture about how unwise it was to feed ferals, so I explained TNR. They ended up telling me how civic-minded I was to be performing such a community service!! I was wishing I had some of those S/N hotline flyers with me.

What an adventure this project is turning out to be!

Cathy

Pam's Feral Cat TNR Blog - Week of 10/4/09

10/4

Sunday was a busy day at the clinic. I transported 13 cats to the clinic for three different caregivers. Once again we had too many cats and 14 had to go to two different vets on Monday. This of course meant holding in my garage and feeding and watering them. I also had to drop off 12 cats to two caregivers I had transported on the way home. We fixed 74 cats in Tempe that day meaning there were a total of 88 cats trapped! There were 28 males and 46 females that will no longer be breeding. What a great feeling!

Many thanks to all the trappers, transporters and volunteers for making our weekend clinics so successful. And most of all thanks to Suzie for all the work she puts in to making the Tempe clinics a success every weekend. All the scheduling, reminder calls, making sure caregivers get traps, and most of all scheduling the right number of cats!

10/5

I delivered one cat back in the morning the morning, a male. This caregiver had not caught the cat she was after, the calico mother cat - why was I not surprised. So I brought my drop-trap along and had her within less than ten minutes. Took her off to the vet along with ten others from the day before - the rest Suzie took to another vet. Suzie also picked the ten up and delivered them to the caregiver for aftercare. Fortunately the caregiver was able to pick up the other four at the other vet. We are always juggling; be it traps or vet slots or transport or aftercare or ... all the things that make TNR successful.

I had a large trapping job that night for 12 cats which turned in to 15 cats. At least it was cool enough to keep the cats in the vehicle overnight.

10/6

I ended up at two vets again with the 15 cats. Since once vet requires pick-up at 1:00 PM and the other at 4:00 PM, one's day is about shot. I spent most of the day sterilizing spay packs, the instruments the vets use for spaying the cats at our high-volume spay days. Each one has to be sterilized between use and we had done a lot of females at the clinic on Sunday. I picked up the cats for aftercare and headed off to set traps again for the straggler I did not catch.

10/7

I caught the last cat overnight (except for one small kitten that was too young to fix). Suzie and Barbara had a successful night trapping and had ten cats to take to the vet. We split up the cats between two vets again. Then there was pick-up, aftercare and release again. Suzie helped a lot as I had yet another trapping job that night. This one was for six cats and turned in to 11 cats over two nights. It was fairly easy except for the caregiver complaining about not wanting the cats back and of course, having to do anything including donate.

He said, "But these are not my cats"! My response was: "But they are not my cats"!

10/8

This was an interesting morning. It was Thursday and one of our vets only allows us ten cats on Thursdays. A last-minute scheduling conflict left me with no vet! After trapping a few stragglers overnight, I had more than the six I had planned, making matters worse. So I called another vet who told me to call back in half an hour and to see if they could take them. So I went to the clinic and sat in the parking lot, hoping. At 7:45 AM they said OK. I was relieved. It would require driving back there in rush hour traffic to pick them up in the afternoon. On the way home in the afternoon I'd set traps again for the stragglers. Then of course there was aftercare. I think I may have had some of Suzie's she had caught on the second night of trapping, but too much time has gone by now to remember. It all starts to blur after a while.

10/9

Caught one last cat overnight and brought him in. After many years of second night trapping I've concluded that one always catches male cats the second night. My theory is the males come around looking for the females who are not there - so they decide to look for a meal - and in the traps they go. I have no scientific proof of this but it does happen a lot. If not males, then it is the elusive calico mother cats that avoided the traps the night before.

10/10

I released the one last cat in the morning. The caregiver again asked me not to release them at his place and did not thank me for helping him nor did he offer to donate anything towards the surgeries. I did not even ask. I left, feeling rather dejected, but then thought to myself that at least I fixed all 11 of the cats and there would be no more kittens. One has to remind oneself often that despite the frustration with caregivers at times, we are still fixing a LOT of cats that would never have been fixed without our help.

Next week - More drop-trapping adventures!

Note: We are having a blow-out yard sale on 11/6 and 11/7 and are collecting donations of household items, books, clothing (good condition), and other items (no furniture). If you have items to donate please call us. The yard sales last Spring were a HUGE success and we hope this one will be even better - we will have lots of designer clothing and shoes for sale so please stop by. A formal announcement of time and location will be sent out later.

...and remember we need your financial support. To donate see our website. If you want to donate for a specific caregiver of trapping please specify. Thanks!

Pam's TNR Blog - Week of 9/27/09

Photo above is of kittens feeding after their release on 10/8. "Yum, this food is sure tasty. Check out my eartip"!

9/27

There were fewer cats than expected on 9/27 at the Tempe clinic. Darn it - I could have trapped for the clinic! Frustrating to miss some vet slots when there are cats to S/N. I think there were about 63 cats.

9/28

I had been contacted by someone I'd helped drop-trap a cat in the past. Guess what? She had more cats to TNR. Having had health problems she needed "full serviece" this time and I was happy to help her. She said there were six or seven cats. I ended up trapping eight cats, several overnight. We caught them all (I hope)! I wish she had caught them all the first time around. It is difficult to do as often some do not come around until the next night and caregivers do not perservere. Sometimes this is because they can't stop feeding the cats. Leaving traps out overnight works well but can only be done in secure area like someone's backyard.

I've found a second night's trapping is essential to success at getting ALL the cats and making sure there will be no more kittens. For those in doubt, this does work. I often talk to caregivers I'd helped years ago and there have been no kittens for several years. And, most of those with large colonies of 30 or more say, "we are down to less than ten cats now". This proves that the life of a feral cat is often short. We rarely see "old" feral cats in our clinics. Most are young and amazingly quite healthly despite living outside.

9/29

I ended up at two vets on Tuesday due to a caregiver not getting to the vet on time. Thankfully one vet took her cats at 11:30 AM. Again, our vets understand the complexity of TNR and are usually willing to accomodate. It seems easy enough - set traps, trap cats and fix them. Wrong! The logistics of trapping and being sure ALL the cats get fixed rivals solving a a very complex physics problem with multiple variables. With people involved it becomes most challenging. I picked these cats up at both vets (at different times of the day course) for aftercare. It was a frustrating, although productive, day.

Later in the day I got a call from a caregiver I'd helped in early August. A cat that had been deemed a previously fixed female had kittens! What a mess. Occasionally this happens. It was made worse as I was the one who had helped her and she had claimed the cat had given birth before. The cat rejected the kittens and she was bottle feeding them. She wanted the mother fixed right away.

9/30

So I picked up the mother cat in the morning to go to the vet and later transported home cats Suzie and Barbara had trapped the night before at two different trapping jobs. I was back to two vets again due to overflow at one vet. And, if this was not enough, there were still five cats with no place to go. These five would have to be held in my garage until the next day. Things now were getting tight. I had to pick up 13 at two vets and had a trapping job planned for 6:00 PM.

When I arrived at the second vet they were still doing surgery due to our bringing too many cats. I had to wait 45 minutes at the cinic and still had to unload all these cats at home. There would be these 13 cats plus the five waiting to be fixed for a total of 18 cats in my garage. I arrived at the trapping site at almost 7:00 PM planning to trap six or seven cats. My friend Joyce was helping me as we planned on leaving traps overnight and a second night's trapping. Since Joyce lived near the trapping location this would save my driving back several times and we use a vet nearby - freeing up vet slots at the other vets for more cats.

10/1

Well, six or seven cats turned in to 13 cats (actually 16 as two more were trapped overnight and two the next night and one was a previously fixed cat). So there had been 18 cats in the garage and ten in the car overnight for a total of 28 cats at my place overnight.

Again, too many cats and not enough vet slots as our one vet normally open on Thursday was closed. So, it was back to the Healing Hearts mobile with 11 cats. Thank you Jan Wilson for helping us out again in a pinch. Three were from my trapping job, five were the left overs from yesterday, and three were from Suzie's second night's trapping at the other job she had trapped. I keep saying trapping is not as easy as it might seem! Oh and Joyce took two cats to the vet near her. These had been trapped overnight, so we were at three different vets today.

I took ten cats to one clinic and 11 cats to the mobile and Suzie picked up the cats at the mobile mid-day. I picked up the ten cats for a total of 23 cats at my place that night - all having to be fed later in the evening. Joyce set traps out overnight and caught two more cats.

That night I had a trapping job for only one cat. The caregiver had offered a large donation if I would help her trap and fix this cat. Her husband was not in favor of TNR nor of having her even feed the cat. So we set up a "cover" trapping operation. It felt again like a "drive by trapping" as I had the cat in less than five minutes. The term "drive by trapping" originated from a drop-trap situation a couple of years ago. I literally sat in my car and pulled the string through a cracked open car door on a cat under the drop-trap. This took place in less than a minute - hence the term "drive by trapping".

10/2 and 10/3

I took in the one cat in the AM and then met Joyce for the release of the 15 cats. We found two more cats in traps from the second night's trapping. I think we had trapped them ALL. We both dropped them off at the nearby vet. she would pick them up and release them. When I retrieved the one cat at the vet it turned out to be a previously fixed female! She was obviously an abandoned pet. I returned her the next morning to the happy caregiver. She gave me the promised donation despite my trapping an already fixed cat. She wanted to help other cats in need and there arep plenty of them out there.

Having trapped nearly 30 cats this week meant lots of traps and covers to wash and get ready for next week. Thank you Bill.

More and more caregivers are in need of financial assistance due to economic hardship. The Spay Neuter Hotline TNR Program depends on donations to pay our vets. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help those in need. For information on how to donate click here.

If you know someone feeding feral cats please call the Spay Neuter Hotline at 602-265-7729 (SPAY) for assistance.

We are also having a huge yard sale on November 6th and 7th. We need items for sale. So clean out your closets! To donate items for the sale please contact Suzie at 602-689-6069.

Next week - Too many cats again!

Check out "Many Faces of E. Coli Infection"

Wayne Pacelle of HSUS has an excellent Blog post on the NY Times article, including how factory farming contributes to infectious disease outbreaks.

How about some ammonia with that burger?

I just read the NY Times article "The Burger that Shattered her Life" by Michael Moss, about Stephanie Smith, a young dance teacher left paralyzed after contracting E. coli from a hamburger. For anyone that assumes ground beef is safer since meat companies were forbidden to sell E. coli contaminated products, consider this: According to health officials, "tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit."

According to the article, the hamburger was produced by Cargill which uses a variety of meat sources in order to lower their costs. The deadly hamburger that Smith consumed was "made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria."

I thought back to October 1999, when Barb Goethe of AZSPCA and I were investigating farm animal cruelty at livestock auctions. One of the most disturbing incidents we witnessed was at a slaughterhouse in the Southwest Valley, where around 40 newborn calves had been left in a holding pen over the weekend with no food or water. By Monday morning, the calves were too weak to stand and were lying in urine and feces. We contacted law enforcement to intervene. As police arrived, slaughterhouse workers began throwing the feeble animals into large garbage bins.

The USDA supposedly investigated the facility, but it was permitted to continue operations. Following the incident, the slaughterhouse added high metal walls surrounding the plant, which is still in business.

It is appalling that large agribusiness continues to utilize inhumane and unsafe practices while resisting improved transparency and oversight. Apparently this industry's standard response to food safety and animal welfare concerns is to keep building high walls.

Karen Michael

Pam's TNR Blog Week of 9/20/09

The photo above was taken by Wayne Begun. I guess he did not like being neutered. Thank you Wayne for sharing this with us!

9/20

I did not trap on Saturday night for Sunday's clinic in Tempe. I volunteered at the clinic and was prepared, as always, to take any "overflow" to another clinic the next day. And we did indeed have too many cats thanks to master trapper Wayne Begun. Nine cats had to be held in my garage until the next day. I released one cat Suzie had trapped for the clinic the next morning after dropping off the nine cats at the vet. Suzie retrieved them in the afternoon and Wayne picked them up in the evening to go back to the caregiver. This was just another example of how labor intensive TNR can be.

On Tuesday I headed up North for another volunteer archaeological survey and documentation project for the BLM. No trapping until next week...Stay tuned.