(Originally published Dec 3, 2011)
As I soon discovered, getting your hands on a live
trap free of charge is a little more difficult that you would imagine. The trick was that we would need it for about
a week and this was also going to be a single-use endeavour. I mean, I’m hoping to not have to trap
another live animal in the near future... or ever. For best results, we needed a thoroughly
clean or uncontaminated trap. When an
animal gets caught, there’s usually a bit of pee or more importantly some type
of pheromone related to fear or stress.
It’ll mark the cage as being unsafe.
If little miss scaredy cat could ‘smell’ that something had been trapped
before, she would never go into it and of course we would never catch
her.
I called around to some of the local animal
shelters (specifically BCSPCA and the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue
Association) assuming that they would have a plethora of traps…. and would be
gracious enough to lend them out.
Nope. They had a limited supply
and needed to use them for their own means. That’s fair enough. I
also called around to some pest control agencies (knowing that the size of trap
I was looking for is intended for raccoons).
I thought maybe they would let us borrow one (or rent for cheap)… just to
use their equipment instead of using their services. Annnd nope.
Some would rent them out on a weekly basis for $200, which was a bit
steep for us at the time. Home Depot had
them for purchase (at $100) but they too did not “rent” them out like they do
with some of their other equipment.
Luckily, Cheryl made contact with a gentleman from
a local small pest control company, Green Valley Pest Control, I think. The guy she spoke with had an extra raccoon
trap that we could just simply borrow... for the week… no charge… in fact he’d
deliver it. Too good to be true? Nope, just an awesome helpful guy. The next Wednesday after work, voilà! a live trap was waiting by our
door.
So right outside our door, the cage was left in the
morning with food inside Thursday and Friday.
After calling her name and placed the dish, she came quite quickly the
first day. I stood in my usual position,
behind my kitchen table eating cereal and drinking coffee in the dark… with
barely a view of the cage where I was hoping the kitty would not see me. It
took her about 10 minutes of walking around the cage and smelling it, ten
minutes of waiting, ten minutes of determining if this cage was safe. Fortunately, hunger won and she eventually
went in. Friday morning, she did it in 2
minutes.
Note: We brought the trap back inside just before I
went to work, just in case the trap was stolen during the
day.
In the meantime, we had converted our second
bedroom into a kitty oasis where we can place the Little Ninja in order to help
acclimate to a life indoors. What used
to be (and had been for the last 3 years) a storage room wanting to be an
office, that room was totally cleaned out.
Stuff went to second hand stores, other stuff was “dealt with”, even more
was shoved and configured to fit into our closets. Finally after 3 years, clean floor space was
exposed, closet doors could close, and our desk and bookshelves were accessible
again. But then we filled it up with
kitty litter, kitty food bowls, a climbing tower, and seating for us when we
wanted to try to bond with the Little Ninja.
Cheryl even devised a little hidey-hole under the desk, where Ninja could
escape and feel comfortably hidden… just in case she needed more time to adjust
on her own.
Saturday was the big Kitty Trap Day we had
planned. We figured it would be an easy
start to the weekend just to continue the consistent pattern… I would get up at
5:30am, as usual, get the trap set and get the food ready. Cheryl would wake up and get ready (difficult
to do on a Saturday morning). We would
be fully dressed, jackets on, shoes on, wallet and keys in hand. By 6:10, kitty would try to eat. By 6:10:01, kitty would be caught. By 6:30am we would be at Atlas Animal
Hospital, the only 24hour vet clinic we knew about. Within hours, we would be home and warm again
with a kitty in our laps. Seemed simple
enough… but “best laid plans” and all that, I guess.
Yes, the food was in the cage. Yes, the cage was set. Yes, the house was dark and I sat watching
the cage with eerie suspense. But no,
the Little Ninja did not take the bait.
Maybe she sensed my anxiety, my tension… like how dogs seem to feel that
‘energy’ kinda. After 10 minutes, I did
spot a black shadow walk by the cage… but she did not go in. After 30 minutes, I was a bit hopeful, so I
was going to the back room to check online for the Atlas clinic’s phone
number. While I was in the back, Cheryl
called to me. The kitty had gone to the
cage entrance, she had stepped inside, may have touched the food (hard to tell
in the dark), but did not set off the
trap… and she ran away very quickly.
Maybe she knew it was a trap, maybe not… either way, this was going
through my head for the next 3 hours:
For the next hour, I stood by the kitchen table
watching the cage outside. Cheryl laid
down on the couch a few feet away, wearing her jacket and shoes. Our lights were still off, it was dark
outside, and I couldn’t tell the difference anymore between shadows, leaves
flying about, or an actual pure black kitty.
My eyes were playing tricks on me.
After an hour, Cheryl went back to bed to wait (she
never did fall back to sleep, though).
Out of sheer persistence and bull-headedness, I couldn’t move. I stood guard for 3 hours, barely moving,
watching the cage, drinking coffee after coffee, seeing no further signs … but
eventually seeing the sun rise. At one
point, I went for a walk around the block to find the kitty. I spotted her down the block, sitting under a
tree next to the school. Odd place since
I have never seen her beyond our yard and the yard of our
neighbours.
By 10 o’clock, Cheryl came back out of the
bedroom. As if on cue, Ani, the cat from
upstairs, came scratching at out back door… like she has every weekend for
years. I jumped outside and grabbed the
trap… hoping Ani wouldn’t set it off accidentally. She was never really food-oriented anyhow, so
there shouldn’t have been such a fear.
Ani came in and we played a bit before she went back out to explore. With Ani loose and defending her territory,
with no new sign of the Ninja, and with the cage back indoors… the Trap Day was
aborted. Discouraged and a bit defeated,
we were uncertain if this would even work.
The next chance would be to catch her at her
evening feeding time. We witnessed her
eating a couple times after I came home from work, so we figured we’d try again
at 5:00pm… just hoping it’d work. We
went about our usual Saturday, with shopping and groceries and a little drive
around town to collect everything else we needed for our second room/kitty
oasis. By 2pm, we were home again. I took a peak ‘round the corner and saw the
Little Ninja on the fence between the 2 houses.
This was her usual perch where she could be “safe”, but was commonly
harassed by Ani and Saffi from the deck upstairs (and just a few feet
away). Those upstairs cats were pretty
good about defining their territory, and this poor little black kitty rightfully
didn’t belong.
Knowing the cat was out, I thought that this’d be
good chance to try to feed her (and trap her).
So out came the cage and the food.
I called her name…. and would see if nature would take its course. But within a minute, freakin’ Wex shows up
instead! Out of nowhere! This hungry, food driven, white cat would
definitely set off the trap and ruin to whole deal. I quickly jumped out again and chased Wex
away (see previous post about the Wex story)
After a couple more minutes, I tried the trap
again. Called the kitty. And now Ani walks by again! So again, I brought the cage back in and
tried to chase Ani away.
Another 15 minutes later, I walk around to house
and I don’t see the kitty… and better yet, no sign of any cat. Hopefully Wex had gone home, hopefully Ani
was having adventures further down the road… hopefully the Little Ninja was
hungry. So out comes the cage…
again. I could see the black kitty
sitting on the fence now… but what I didn’t see was Ani on the deck above giving
her the ol’ staredown. Obviously the
Little Ninja wasn’t going anywhere. I
brought the cage closer…,and freakin’ Wex shows up again! Seriously, it was like the Benny Hill theme
should have been played. With these 2
other guys hanging around, with me jumping in and out of the house, with the
cage rattling it’s way in & out of our yard, the Little Ninja wasn’t going
to try anything at all.
I gave up.
I would have to wait until the next morning and try
this all again.
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