cat #1 - busted!

i know we've kept you in the dark for a week now. but the day has finally come... we caught a cat.

I was walking in our backyard to take out the trash and check on our bait. at most, I was expecting the tuna to be eaten. then I noticed the cage was lopsided and was moving! I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story....

the night before - first time actually putting the meal in the cage.
our friend gets more than seafood. sucka!

... but not before leaving us one final gift. no joke - this appeared right around the trap, the same morning I found the cat.

so anyway - we took the cat to our local humane society. we'll be posting video footage of jodi's reaction, so check back soon!

new post - coming soon

we'll have exciting news and a new post for you soon. please check back in the next day or two!

the cat trap, day 6

the tuna is going deeper into the trap today. we'll see if our feline foe will still partake....

the cat trap, days 4 & 5

success! sort of....

we've been visited the past two evenings by something that enjoys tuna. both mornings we've come out to an empty bowl. we've found that putting a little water in with the tuna helps - guess it's a little more appetizing out here in the desert.

regardless, we think our friend is getting as used to eating over here as it is to crapping. check it out....

the cat trap, day 3

our first two days trying to catch the cat have been unsuccessful. we haven't even had any nibbles at the tuna we left out.

I read up on animal traps on the internet before today's outing. It suggested a few things to try.

One suggestion is to set food/bait outside the trap for a few consecutive days in order to get the animal used to eating in this area. The other is to conceal the trap a bit - keep it shaded for the animal's protection, and make it seem more like a natural hiding place than a cage. so here's what we've got....

I've placed the cage against a wall with a section of leftover fencing covering it. I've also placed an old towel & throw rug over the cage itself. this makes it kinda dark inside and covers the back side of the cage, creating a sort of "cave" effect. the grub is now placed a little in front of the cage to start luring our friend out for regular meal time. come an' get it, sucka!

the cat trap, day 2

jodi suggested we place the trap a little farther out into the open. after all, they never poop right next to the wall, or on our gravel - they go right in the middle of our lawn.

so we put the trap out in the middle of the lawn.

same setup - tuna on cardboard.

and... no dice. might have to try something different tomorrow.

the cat trap, day 1

I placed the cat trap outside overnight for the first time. we put a small amount of tuna on a piece of cardboard near the end of the trap and I placed it right next to the wall so that, in case it was a really sunny day, at least the animal would have been in the shade.

no results! nothing. the tuna has completely dried up into a flaky powder and the trap hasn't even been sprung.

plan B - the animal trap

months have gone by since our story began. months of picking up cat droppings and repeated visits to our neighbor, begging her to help us put a stop to the madness. months of keeping a loaded super-soaker or garden hose nearby to try and repel our foes.

anymore, jodi routinely hops out of our vehicle as we pull into the driveway and picks up a stone from our yard. she does this because 1-2 cats are always walking along our wall or in our front yard while we're away. she's never actually hit one - but then, we haven't really scared them away.

the Humane Society, whom we've called a few times, says they will not come out to neighborhoods to retrieve wayward animals. they say the animals have to be brought to them.

so now we've stooped to our lowest level. we've purchased an animal trap. below is a picture of jodi the day our beloved trap arrived.

can you see the elation?

this is me, setting the trap for the first time.

the cat situation, part 3

after a couple weeks of coaxing, jodi finally convinced me to go. I walked over and knocked on the door. as it swung open, I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. "hi, i'm john and we live next door...."

I explained our situation and our neighbor sympathised with us. she really did. she apologized profusely and asked if this was the reason why the cinder block wall dividing our properties was lined with orange peels. I slowly nodded. she said she'd be "pissed" too if someone's animals were doing this in her yard.

I emphasized that we weren't angry with her and that we just wanted something to be done to remedy the situation. we just wanted to stop having to clean up her cats' poo.

we felt better. hope was in sight. so we thought.

things didn't get better. we still picked up 1-2 shovels full of feline feces off our front and back yards on a weekly basis. I'm ashamed to admit that on more than one occasion, instead of shoveling the poo back into the alley-way behind our home, I tossed the shovels of crap back over the cinder block wall onto the animal owner's property. their animals, their poop, right? pitiful.

the cat situation, part 2

jodi and I became more and more frustrated with the next door cats.

once, while we had company and were peacefully sitting down to dinner at our picnic table outside, we noticed one of the cats walking along the gravel beside our home. jodi briskly stood up from the dinner table and stomped - i mean STOMPED - over to where the cat was milling around and shouted "hey!" she picked up a stone to scare it away, but it became keen to her plot and hopped over the cinder block fence that separates our home from the neighbor's. we all laughed at how clearly this whole poop situation was getting to her.

throughout the ordeal, we've gotten a lot of advice from our friends. someone told us there was an animal leash law in our county. after looking into it, though, we realized it didn't apply to private property.

another person told us that orange peels help to deter cats. so the next morning, the cinder block wall was lined with orange rinds. as we checked on the wall that afternoon, we saw the back cat defiantly parading along the length of it, stepping over the orange rinds.

i believe it was at that point jodi tried to talk me into getting a BB gun. I had to tell her that we'd have a difficult time explaining BBs embedded in our neighbor's cat to our local Humane Society and PETA.

august 30, 2005 was jodi's birthday - her favorite gift that day was a Super Soaker - because she planned to use it on our feline friends. she tried it out the next morning. the orange cat prowled onto our yard as jodi hid around the corner, peeking at it. she quickly stepped out and fired a burst of water.... but the cat was too fast and escaped before being hit.

it was time to talk to our neighbor....

the cat situation, part 1

the cat story for us goes something like this....

in march, 2005, a year or so after we moved to our home, we began noticing little "gifts" left by a neighborhood animal. these smelly gifts started to show up on our lawn more and more regularly. they were small and always uniform in size. for a while, we thought they were from dog turds. but these were much smaller than your average dog turd - but not quite as small as rodent feces. and how would dogs be getting into our gated backyard?

around the same time, we began noticing 2-3 cats paroling our yard. they'd scurry away as we pulled into the driveway or walked out to our backyard. there was an orange one - more shy and timid. and there was a black one - the ring leader. we finally realized it was indeed the cat(s) from next door who were leaving special deliveries on our property.

the poo situation got worse. every week, I'd have about one shovel-full of dried-up cat doo-doo to toss out before I could mow the lawn. we decided something needed to be done.

the purpose of this blog is to document the humane capture of 1-3 neighborhood felines that stink up our yard on a regular basis, with the intent of turning them in to the local Humane Society. this blog will hopefully have a defined, happy ending....