Success!!

Tonight we trapped the new cat, Lincoln, that showed up at the boxcar colony about two weeks ago!  Our strategy was perfection.  I last fed there yesterday so they'd all be good and hungry today.  My fellow feeders weren't sure he was still around, because no one had seen him since I saw him Tuesday a.m.  I thought he probably wasn't showing up because he didn't need to all week, because food was very plentiful, so he could eat when we weren't there.  So we tried anyway.  When we got there, the five familiar cats were all out front waiting to be fed, so Joyce, my trapping partner and the cat whisperer, went around the south side to a different feeding area to feed them wet food.  They will all eat with her a foot away, so we knew Lincoln wouldn't go there.  She fed them up so they wouldn't go into the trap after food and muck up the plan, and while I waited for her on the north side, the main feeding area, I saw Lincoln show up.  So I set the trap up with tuna for bait, Joyce came back to sit on the far stairs and wait with me, and he started sniffing around the wrong end of the trap.  Then he cruised over to where he could watch us from about ten feet away and see what we were up to for a few minutes.  We didn't move a muscle.  The he ambled about the whole north feeding area again, and by this time, some of the other cats were drifting over from the south side.  We were really anxious for none of them to start going for the trap, but luckily, what Joyce had fed them was enough for the moment.  Lincoln finally went to the business end of the trap, and we had him.  Total time from when I placed the trap to when we had him -- maybe ten minutes.  We are so good at strategizing this colony.

This is Lincoln about a week ago:

Lincoln

This is him looking for a way out of the trap.  Tomorrow he'll be neutered (I assume he's a he.  He has those big unneutered male cheeks.)

Lincolntrapped

So with this trapping, once again, all the cats at the boxcars will be spayed and neutered!