Adventures in cat trapping: The Elusive Inskpot

A major success this morning -- we finally trapped the elusive tortie Inkspot!  We've been trying to get her since she was a kitten.  And I almost bailed entirely on trapping today because I'm sick this weekend, with a bad cold, bit of a fever and aches and feeling like shit.  But I thought well, I could just spend an hour, then come home to bed again...

This was her, last August about ten weeks old, being amused by the elaborate drop-trap efforts we resorted to after two weeks of trying.  We've made no progress on this colony, what with Inkspot and one other unspayed female (who just had kittens) at large since last August.  We'll be after the kittens, who are just at weaning age within days, I expect.

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This is Inkspot six months later, grown into a beauty. Photo by Laurie Pringle (not me).

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The strategy today was to show up early, between nine and ten a.m., when the cats at the east-of-downtown colony are used to being fed by the people in the little office building.  But this time, since no kind of food bait has been enough to lure Inkspot into past traps, we used catnip for bait.  Another trapper swears by it and uses nothing else.  It's a lot less messy than wet food, so I was game.  I also lined the bottom of my regular trap (not the drop trap) with a piece of cardboard instead of newspaper, which is also less trouble (it doesn't flap in a breeze, for one) and when I tested it with Macaroon this morning, I discovered that the trap sprung before she was halfway down it, instead of waiting for her to get all the way into the end.  Bonus!

So set up was a breeze, without the fuss of paper, I put a good bunch of catnip in the business end of the trap and a wee pinch in the mouth and at the midpoint.  Then my trapping partner and I pulled back to wait.  Leopard, a gorgeous orange tabby female, came to check it out first, because Leopard is the first to check anything out.  It didn't smell like food, though, so Leopard left it alone.  Inkspot wasn't far behind, because she hangs out with Leopard.  She went to the mouth of the trap, and clearly liked what she smelled because she began rolling around right there.  It took a minute or two for her to decide to go further, and we were watching with our hearts pounding.  "We're going to get her," I said.  And a minute later we had her.  It was maybe five minutes from when I set the trap to when we had her, a record only matched by one time we trapped a tame, hungry, stray cat at the boxcars by simply showing him food and shoving him into a carrier.

Once home I started to transfer her from trap to cage, and that's where I lost my edge (I blame my fevered state).  She went into the cage, then doubled back over top of the trap, and shot out of the recovery room, ran for the sight of daylight at my apartment windows, and started going spare, trying to get out.  I rounded up my cats, stuffed them into the bedroom and then had to figure out how to retrap her.  Eventually, after trying to herd her back into the other end of the apartment, she decided to take refuge on top of the fridge, under the edge of the cupboards over top.  Perfect.  I got up on a chair and using a big beach towel, worked it around her (covering her head first--a must), and then slowly worked her out from the space.  Then I clutched her in a death grip, bundled in the towel, to cross the ten feet to the recovery room, then shoved her into the recovery cage.  Where she is now, sulking and recovering from a bit of a day.  And plotting my demise.

Inkspot-captivity

(Yes, that is a bit of blood on the wall in the back that I've tried to wash off, but it's not hers, it's from a prior cat who had an open abcess on his ear, who flailed around when I tried to get him into a carrier.)

And now after all this excitement, I'm heading back to bed.