Fools rush in ...

I got a call the other night from a woman who owns a farm not far from me.  She's got a little situation with her barn cats.  Even though she's been taking the ones she can catch to get spayed and neutered, there are a few ferals who have been eluding her capture and keep reproducing, as cats are wont to do.  As a result, she currently has forty-six cats.

*GULP*

As I said, some of them are spayed and neutered, but a lot of them are not, and the ones who are not are feral.  She called me asking for help, so I'm going to visit her farm on Friday night and try to get a handle on the situation. I drive past the place twice a day on my commute, so I know where it is and that it's a well-kept farm.  Actually, a lot of the fall pics I posted yesterday were taken on the road this woman lives on.  The rescues I'm currently volunteering for are presently overloaded trying to help with other community cats, so I'm going to try and handle this one myself.  FAMOUS LAST WORDS.  haha.  I can live-trap no problem, but how am I only going to trap the cats who need it, without trapping the cats who've already been altered?  She says she knows which ones have already been done, but that won't stop them from taking the bait come trapping time. (I don't think she's been ear-tipping; I'm going to try and talk her into tipping the ones we get done.) She wanted to know if I could just come with, like, a giant net and only catch the ones she points out to me who she knows needs to be done, which, haha,  NO.  I no longer mess with feral cats, and the idea of getting a struggling, angry feral out of a net and into a carrier is NOT APPEALING to me.  *shudder*.  Sorry, it's live-trap or nothin'.  And yes, I can use my trap-not-a-traps, but I think I'll go with standard traps first.  Nice, sturdy, STEEL traps.  :) 

She says she can only afford to do a few at a time, so I'm thinking I can just saturation trap, maybe a couple of times a month as surgery slots become available at area clinics.  So if, say, she's got an appointment to get four ferals altered on a certain date, I can go up the night before with, say, ten traps, and then after trapping, we can free the ones the woman says have already been done, and just take the ones who need it to the appointment on that date.

Of course, it'll be the last stubborn few who will present the most problem, but I figure we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  Breeding season won't kick in again until Spring, so we've got some time to get a handle on the problem.  In the meantime, if anybody's got any suggestions on how to make this run more smoothly, I'M ALL EARS.

How do I get myself  INTO this stuff?!  Sheesh.