To Catch a Cat

There's a feral cat who's been appearing around my place for a few years now, off and on.   He'd show up on my gamecam, and occasionally I'd catch him sneaking in through the cat door in the morning to eat some of permacats' food.  He's really a pretty cat, black with green eyes.

But he fought with my cats and sprayed all over everything, and you KNOW he was busy making lots of little ferals with whichever females were available.  So whenever I'd trap for other people and I thought there might be an extra neuter appointment available, I'd set a trap for the feral, but he wouldn't go in.  I don't know if he'd been trapped before or had maybe seen another cat get trapped at some point, but he wasn't falling for it.

Things took on an added urgency last week, when one of my gamecam pics seemed to show that he could be wearing an embedded collar. The picture was taken at night, by my lesser-res gamecam, so it was hard to tell, but I decided that it was time to bring this boy IN.  The rescue I volunteer for helped me get a neuter appointment for yesterday, and I started leaving the trap in the garage every night, with the safety on so he would go in and eat withOUT being trapped.

At first he was all, oh HELL no lady I ain't that dumb:

So I moved the food to the open end of the trap, and every night I would move it back a little further into the trap.

Slowly he turned, inch by inch, step by step:

And then it was Monday night, with the neuter appointment for first thing Tuesday morning.  I baited the trap,  unlatched the safety, and waited.

The moment before:

And SUCCESS!:

I was sitting in the living room and I HEARD that trap go off, and I felt liked I'd just hit a home run in the World Series.  I GOT HIM!

I hurried out, took a couple of victory photos because I'm only human:

then quickly covered the trap and put it in a dark corner of the garage until I could take him to the neuter appointment Tuesday morning.  He came through surgery just fine, and while he was out I had his ear notched so that if anyone ever traps him again, they will know he's been neutered.  Turns out he wasn't wearing a collar after all, and was apparently healthy. I had him vaccinated, and they even trimmed his nails while he was under. 

Last night he came back from the vet's, and within a couple of hours of being released, he was back for some chow.

This cat is feral, and will likely always BE a feral, but when I dropped him off at the vet's for surgery they needed a name for their records, and so he is now Good Boy.  Because I believe in naming something what you hope it will be, not what it is. :)