We weren't supposed to bring any cats to the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic on Sunday, but somebody misunderstood some instructions and trapped a couple of cats. Rather than have them wait in traps until our next scheduled run in on Thursday, Tammy elected to send them in yesterday.
Super-volunteer Jennifer picked them up from Tammy's and brought them to PAWS (thanks Jennifer!) while I picked them up from PAWS and brought them back to Tammy's for recovery.
While I was at PAWS, I met up with FF Board Member Kurt - he was bringing in a colony of cats that he had trapped, and he had quite a story to tell about this adventure. It seems that the caretaker reported a total of eight cats in the colony. Kurt arrived at the location very early on Saturday morning and, within a few hours, had trapped all eight cats. However, when he got back to his house, the caretaker called him and reported that she had found a litter of newborn kittens! Kurt had almost certainly trapped the mom - now what to do? He couldn't return the cats to the colony and let them all go - that was not a good option. Kurt, being the brave guy that he is, grabbed his Kevlar gloves and proceeded to reach into each trap, scruff the feral (most were NOT HAPPY with this) and then gave it a brief examination to see if it looked like it was a "mom". He found the mom this way. He then drove to the caretakers house, fetched the kittens and re-united them with their mom. This new family has been given to super-volunteer Mary to foster - and Mary reports that they're doing fine (thanks Mary!). The caretaker then called Kurt AGAIN, later that day, to inform him that she had just seen two more cats - obviously the colony was bigger than the eight she had originally claimed. Kurt went back to the location and, after several hours of work, succeeded in trapping these final two cats.
Wow - great job Kurt!
With these first two cats of April, Feral Fixers has now processed 170 cats for the year and 3,675 overall.