This afternoon Duchess, the mama cat, was meowling around the trap, either looking for her kittens or food. I wasn’t about to give her the kittens, but on the off chance she might go in and eat, I put food in the trap and set it.
Half an hour later there was a VERY UPSET Duchess in the trap.
I texted the rescue people and they called and said bring her down to the rescue centre, there’s someone there, so we transferred her to the cat carrier (which was easy but impressed the rescue ladies that we’d done it successfully) and I brought her down. They felt her up, and, great news, she’s NOT pregnant!
So instead of keeping her until she has babies, they whisked her right off to the vet, and in the morning she’ll be spayed. She’ll recuperate at the rescue centre for a few days and then she’ll come back to our garden.
We still have the trap, and in fact as soon as I’m done writing this I’m going to go put food in it again in hopes of catching Panda one of these days. (I’m much less confident of catching the ill-tempered ginger, Marky.)
*laughs* I’d said if we brought Duchess down in the trap maybe I’d leave it with them for a few days and the lady was like, “NO! KEEP IT! Now that you’ve gotten started I don’t want you to stop!” But we got Duchess into the cat carrier, which was much easier to transport, so it wasn’t an issue anyway. :)
Anyway, I’m VERY glad Duchess isn’t pregnant again, and VERY glad she’ll get fixed and won’t be having any *more* babies. I do not want a garden over-run with kittens, even if they are adorkable.
Thank you for trapping spading/neutering and releasing the free-range cats who live in your garden. They, and you, will all be better for it.
The HSUS helped me with a TNR program when we bought out farmette. It came with 56 (yes, that’s not a typo) barn / feral cats, none of which were ever handled. I totally understand what you are going through. The worst part was as litters arrived, I started impressing them from birth, so that they, at least, were not scared of me. The drawback was that every trap I set wound up with one of the tame (i.e., spayed / neutered) ones in it: “Okay, I ate. You can let me out now.”
*laughs* oh no! “No, kitties, no! You don’t understand how this is supposed to work…!”