Woman describes catching feral cats

WOODBRIDGE, Va. - Martha is part of a small network of women who help cats in Woodbridge and the surrounding communities. They feed several colonies of feral cats, spay/neuter them as funds allow and remove kittens and homeless friendly cats to foster until permanent homes can be found.

Martha asked that her last name not be printed because she is overwhelmed with the number of cats she is currently being asked to help. She spends her own retirement money on her passion. And while her passion is endless, her bank account is not.

Martha uses the Trap-Neuter-Return method to help feral cats. Once captured, the cats are sterilized by veterinarians before being returned to the area where they are trapped.

She often is called in by someone who has been feeding a colony of feral cats, doesn’t want them removed or euthanized but does want to manage the population.

Martha describes in her own words the recent trapping, neutering and returning of a colony of cats with the aid of a Woodbridge woman named Bert. Like Martha, Bert did not want her last name printed for fear people would bring her additional cats to care for.

“I had gotten a phone call from Bert who lives in a trailer park in Woodbridge. Several months ago she noticed a female cat in the woods adjoining her trailer with five kittens. They were just a few weeks old and mom was nursing them.

Bert began to leave food. Now they are 4- or 5–months-old and she was afraid they would start breeding and asked me if I could help get them altered. She offered to pay for the surgeries and help me with the trapping. She definitely wanted them to come back and live in the woods where she could feed them.

She was in the habit of bringing a mixture of wet and dry food to them in a large pan twice a day which she put on top of an old truck cover that had been left in the woods. They also use that as a shelter.

The management of the trailer court knows about them and is fine with her feeding them.

I went over on a Wednesday and set up six traps, which I propped open with bungie cords and covered with towels and instructed Bert to toss some dry food into them in addition to her regular feeding on the camper shell. Within a day or two they were going in and out eating the “snacks” and occasionally sleeping in the traps.

On Saturday at 3:30 p.m., feeding time, I went over and armed all the traps and baited them with wet food and we withheld the regular dinner. Unfortunately the mom wasn’t there, but within a half-hour we had three of the adolescents. I took them home with me and left three traps armed.

Bert called at dusk and said she had a raccoon, which happens a lot after dark.

At 6 a.m. Sunday, I drove over and started rebaiting and setting those last three traps. Before I got to trap Number Two, the remaining two adolescents had both gone into trap Number One and were trapped together. No sign of mom. I took my “two-fer” home and separated them into individual traps, leaving two traps set for mom.

By 8:30 a.m. Sunday, still no sign of mom and I had to leave with the other five. Bert left the traps open for another couple of hours but still no mom. Meanwhile at the spay clinic, our trapped five were given anesthetic shots through the bars of their traps and were altered, and given pain medication and rabies shots.

Also while under the anesthetic, they were “eartipped.” A small quarter-inch corner was clipped off the left ear. This is the universal signal in feral colonies that cats have been altered. They were watched carefully until they started to wake up and then were placed back into their traps which had been lined with fresh newspapers.

Bert had four males and one female. Including the rabies, it cost her $50 each for the males and $65 for the females - $265 which she was happy to pay.

I kept the cats over Sunday night on a table in my recovery area, an unfinished basement, and provided food and water in their traps after they had fully recovered from the anesthetic.

The next day, Monday, when Bert came home from work, we released them from the traps back into her woods. They are doing fine - very happy to be home.”

[The mother cat was not located.]