I tawght I taw a puddy tat!

If Tweety Bird lived in Stoneridge he would say that a lot whenever he passed by the maintenance building. It seems that a stray female cat took refuge in the large building. Our grounds keeper, Darcy, welcomed the stranger because, as it turned out, she was a good mouser. Feeling sorry for the cat, Darcy started feeding her. Apparently she must have had company... the male kind. So what happens when a stray female meets a stray male? Yep, you guessed it... little stray kittens. We now have 6 stray or feral cats. If you do the math these 6 could potentially turn into 40+ by the end of the summer. We certainly don't need that many cats roaming around our community.

Stoneridge Pal Patty worked with Darcy last summer as a gardener and knew of his dilema. She saw an article in the local newspaper about the annual "Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Day"
and thought that this could be the perfect way our coffee social group can start doing something for our community.

What's a Feral Cat? Well, according to Wikipedia: "A feral cat is an unowned and untamed cat separated from domestication. Feral cats are born in the wild and may take a long time to socialize, or may be abandoned or lost pets that have become wild. They should not be confused with the wildcat which are not descended from domestic cats. A stray cat (or alley cat) while unowned, still exhibits temperament similar to that of a pet.^[1] In popular usage, these terms are sometimes used interchangeably."

Sunday, February 22nd was the only day that the local veterinary clinics were doing the spay and neutering for free. That meant that we needed to get traps set on the Friday before. Patty lined up 4 traps from a local trapper and we had to pick up 2 from Priest River Animal Shelter.

Stoneridge Pals Patty and Bobbie picking up the traps from Priest River Animal Shelter.

We got our lesson is setting the traps and proceeded to get the 6 of them ready. We were advised to put the traps in an out of the way spot and cover them with cardboard so the feral cats would feel comfortable going into them.

Patty, Bobbie and her husband Steve getting the traps ready to set.

Maggie and me setting the traps.

Traps all set and ready to go.

When I checked the traps Saturday morning we caught 2 and one got away with a belly full of food. Somehow it had managed to get the entire can out of the trap before setting it.
When Patty and I checked them again that afternoon we got only one more. We could only hope that we would trap the last 3 before 7:30am Sunday when we needed to load them up and take them to town.

They spent the night in Patty's garage, out of the elements. Somehow we managed to get the remaining food out of the cages without releasing them. "No food after midnight" were orders from the vet to prepare the cats for surgery.

After loading our 3 captives, Patty, Bobbie and me checked to see if we got lucky enough to trap the remaining cats. No luck. We would have to settle for just the 3 of them.

We headed for the Rathdrum Animal Clinic and arrived at around 8:30am with a half dozen more groups with more feral cats.

Our 3 captives. It turns out that one of them was the mother.

Patty signing them in for surgery.

Getting the cages tagged.

Here they get moved back to the holding rooms.

The clinic continued to take in cats until 10am. Patty picked them up later that same afternoon and they recovered in her garage. Monday they were released.

In Tuesday's Coeur d'Alene Press they covered spay day. Kootenai County alone got 260 strays which amounts to $26,000 worth of procedures. Because 80% of the cats captured were female it prevented at least 1,000 unwanted kittens.