Census - Captured Cats

 I'll try to catch up a bit over the next few days.

My big news was trapping and spaying Sasha on October 10th. 

 I had spent almost an hour setting the trap every morning for two weeks. Sasha is very wary about traps. she was trapped in the drop trap back in July 2024 along with another cat, but I released her because she had newborn kittens at the time. Since that July she has had three more litters of kittens and I have made many attempts to trap her again. 

I tried trapping her at the main feeding area. She normally grabs a mouthful of canned food from a bowl, then darts back into the bushes to eat it alone. I thought that I could get he familiar with taking the food from a bowl just inside the trap, then lure her deeper in over time. It didn't work - she ignored any food inside the trap.

 

I noticed that when she finished eating, she was taking a mouthful of food across the spring and uphill to her kittens - about 8 - 9 weeks old. She would find a comfortable spot to lay and let them nurse and eat. I decided to put food in the area where she was meeting her kittens. 

 The kittens at eight weeks:

 I managed to trap her with the drop trap at the area where she fed her kittens. I was prepared to trap the kittens as well and hold them in a crate during her recovery, but they didn't come out the morning I trapped her. It happened on a Friday and of course my regular vet was on vacation that day. I arranged a walk-in appointment with another vet and it all went well. She was released at dusk that evening to get back to her kittens and has been showing up to eat and looking good every day since then.