Catching the kitty that lived on my porch through -30 C (-22F) temperatures has kind of consumed my spare time for the last few weeks. Well, that, and my birthday on Monday, and the midterm that I wrote, and the holidays of course. 🙂
But kitty took precedence. Even though he came and went a bit sporadically, he was usually on the porch waiting for his meal when I came home from work. After watching him shiver and huddle on the yoga mat, we got smart and bought an outdoor heating pad which we enclosed in a lovely big box with styrofoam inside, and draped with a blanket to keep snow off. Then we got a second heating pad as a side wall, and kitty moved in pretty permanently. We probably would have gotten a third and fourth heating pad as well, but finally, finally, kitty deigned to walk into the cat trap that was thoughtfully placed there by our perennial favorite cat rescue group – The MEOW Foundation.
Food didn’t do it, either. He was too leery of the trap to be enticed by food, and circled it carefully, electing to go hungry rather than chance being eaten by crocodiles or whatever his kitty imagination came up with. Plus it doesn’t help that food freezes in about two minutes in these temperatures, offering very little in the way of temptation in a short while. It was a healthy sprinkle of catnip that lured him in, a substance that proved irresistible. Kitty went in, the trap went slam! and a mournful meow later, we had a very apprehensive prisoner.
Of course this happened at about eleven last night, and of course the vet where we dropped him off was clear across the city, and of course I’m exhausted today, but also quite elated that kitty will spend his first warm night inside, in… forever? The vet will neuter him, and fix up any cuts and injuries, de-worm him and vaccinate him, and he will go to the MEOW Foundation to recuperate. There they will determine whether he’s fully feral, or just shy, and will decide whether his future lies in being adopted or not.
At the very least he’s warm, fed and getting used to people, and while his empty box sits on my porch I sleep better at night not worrying whether he’ll get hit by a car today, get eaten by a coyote, or where in the world his latest injury came from.