This past Sunday, Feral Fixers brought in one cat, a female feral, to the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic to be fixed. Super-volunteers Maureen & Kris did the trip both ways; picking up the cat from Tammy's in the morning and taking it to PAWS and then picking it up in the evening from PAWS and bringing it back to Tammy's. Thanks Maureen! Thanks Kris!

Most of the cats that Feral Fixers deals with have their own story and this one, Vilma, is no exception. Feral Fixers president Tammy gives us the details:

Friday we got a call about kittens in a window well. How simple can that be? NOT! I went over initially, thinking it would be a simple grab and go for the kittens. NOT! Picture a window well that was the usual size around but three and a half feet deep. Yikes! And the kittens were a good 8 weeks old, laying in a pile in what was the south side of the house and in the hot sun. You couldn't be sure that they would stay almost comatose if you tried to climb down in there and the picture I had was of them climbing my body and launching from my head, leaving a bloody trail as they went!

Time for more equipment and reinforcements. Judy came with, we brought our "Freeman Net" and transfer cages and trap dividers. The net has a rigid hoop that can be drawn closed and the bottom zips closed. Judy scooped up the first two kittens as they popcorned around in the window well and we got them transferred - definitely a two person job, juggling the trap, the net and the divider. As Judy went to get the second transfer trap, I managed to get all three of the remaining kittens together into the net. Bim-Bam, in they went into the transfer. Having the right people and the right equipment meant that this endeavor took about 20 minutes, tops.

We set a trap for the mom with canned pink salmon - so stinky! and asked the residents to call as soon as she was trapped. Less than three hours later came the call. Vilma had gone into the trap and seemed just fine with the turn of events.

When the kittens were much smaller, it was probably no big deal for Vilma to nurse them, even bring them food. But they were now too big for her to carry one AND leap 3 and a half feet! They were at risk from predators - raccoons get pretty big and nasty - at risk from the heat. If it had rained for hours like it did on Saturday, they would not have survived it. We've had them for three days now, they are no longer dehydrated, their tummies are full, they've been dewormed and they are only half-heartedly hissing - followed quickly by that crackly sound they make before they start purring all the time. This is all on the "meant to be" chart!

Oh, I'm told that everyone always wants to know what color the kittens are: Black, Black/white, 2 brown tabbies, silver tabby.

So much back story to one female feral named Vilma.

Just another day in the life of Feral Fixers... This additional cat gives us a total of 72 cats for June, 440 for the year and 6,416 overall since Day 1.