A lot has happened this summer, I moved out of my parents house to LA for school, me and my long time girlfriend broke up, I have had several job interviews to no avail and I started volunteering at an animal shelter five days a week for an hour and a half a day. Long story short my summer has been stressful and boring.
About a two weeks ago, much to one of my roommates displeasure I noticed that I had what I thought at the time was a kitten living outside. I knew she was too old for socializing but I decided to feed her (and probably a few of the neighborhood cats) It wasn't long before I noticed that she was not the kitten but the mom cat. Thats right she had three little kittens, one black and white, one completely black and one tabby girl (more on that later) that looks exactly like her mother.
Since I work at a shelter I asked them for their help as I upped what I was feeding the mom and kittens. They were out of cat traps but would let me know as soon as they got them in. Finally on Friday they emailed me to let me know that they had three traps in and I could have one and they would also give me a cage to hold the kittens in since they had no room for them and there is still hope for socializing them.
I then had to convince my roommates to let me have them in the house for a short period of time before I could get them back to my family in NM. To do this I had to email other shelters to see if they had room this led to a very confusing email that contained this paragraph:
"Tell your room mates that they should be thinking about something else other than ME ME ME and grow up to the reality of the change change change America voted in to office a couple of years ago. We got our CHANGE and soon they may be homeless and jobless as well.
Hang in as kitten season will soon pass and people will be looking to adopt and take the older ones. That is if there are any people left in California and especially L.A. that have a job.
God Bless you for your caring, not all that common these days."
I repeat all I asked was if they had room for three kittens.
Anyways the sane people that emailed me back said that they did not have room and would not have room probably for months. This all helped me finally convince my roommates to let me have them in my room. Great plan? Done deal? time to relax till I get them? Enter landlord.
Now I don't have a copy of my lease but I could have sworn that I was allowed to have animals with a small deposit. Nope. One of my roommates told him about the plan and he had a bad experience in the past with cats and flees. I talked to him for about ten minutes but he did not see why they had to be inside, but he would let me use to garage. Alright not the best plan but you have to roll with the punches.
Finally I got the cat trap on Monday (yesterday) and I set it up. I'm hoping to get the kittens then the mom since I had to get the mom spayed. Less than 20 minutes after I put the trap out I went out to show my roommate how it works, who is in the trap? Mom. The cats much like my landlord don't care about my plans. Oh well, I ran her over to the shelter which sent me to a vet to get her spayed this morning.
I ran to target this morning to get all the supplies needed to have the kittens live in the garage (litter box, litter, toys, towels, a tower fan and light bulbs) Then I ran over to the vet to pick up the mama cat who is to stay in the trap until tomorrow morning. Okay so I set up the kittens living cage and think I will wait till tomorrow to try and catch them (by now I should know I shouldn't have plans) As I returned from the gym the black and white kitten was in the garage and ran to the back so I rushed inside and shut the door. The kitten trying to get out (having never been close to a human) it freaked when it saw me. I quickly grabbed it, it got a few bites on me before I could grab the scruff of its neck and relax it. I quickly tossed it into the cage that was set up for it and its siblings.
Thinking I was done for the day I went inside put a band aid on my bite marks. I then thought about how the kittens usually hang out in my friends car so I opened the engine to see if they were there. The tabby girl was in fact sitting right on the engine. She ran to the garage so I thought it would be the same as her sibling. This time the kitten didn't relax when I grab the scruff of her neck but in fact peed on me (this was in fact when I noticed she was in fact a girl) and bit me before I let her go. So now I'm definitely done for the day and will just wait till tomorrow when I get the trap back, with my current track record I will probably just end up catching the mom four times.
I then realized I had zero idea how to actually socialize a cat that has never been near humans before. Luckily I know how to use google and found some websites. I found one I think fits the best and will thus try my best to follow it. This is the sad part, because the kittens are so scared of me I won't be able to take pictures of them because I don't think it will do much more than freak them out. I will try to take pictures of the shelters kittens and publish them here.
So now you might be asking why I decided I wanted to put this in blog form. Basically I'm doing this by myself, my mother has been helpful but there is very little she can do from a couple of states away. I want a place to discuss what I'm doing and just vent over whats going on in my life. I'm worried because I don't think I will ever know if catching the kittens is the best thing to do. I guess I can only hope for the best. This whole process will probably take six weeks or more. If you want to read what the plan is go here I will probably blog everyday, after the whole process I might decide to continue this blog, we will see.
If you click you can see tabby girl in the back round.
I know you are conflicted about trapping these babies, but their lives will be longer and healthier in captivity.
ReplyDeleteTaming ferals is always an adventure, hang in! The catch always seems to be that it requires much time just being there. For me that usually meant sitting around in the bathroom for hours with someone hiding behind the toilet. Maybe you can study in the garage?
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