Disarming Mama

Many of the ladies and gentlemen lurking around my yard had now been captured and spayed or neutered.  But all that effort would be for nothing if I didn't catch Mama and two of the other wild women.  Of the three, Mama was the biggest threat.  That cat was a lethal reproducing machine.  Even worse, her last litter had been unhealthy.  Every time I took another batch of cats to the vet for surgery, the morning of departure I'd find one of the kittens dead.  It was heartbreaking and had to stop.

 But to stop her and the other wild women, I had to catch them first.  

To catch these three incorrigibles, I had to take off the kid gloves.  It was time to break out the dreaded trap and actually use it to trap.  And since there were three that continued to elude me, I borrowed two more traps.  It was now or never.  Their surgery was scheduled.

I started off on the last leg of the crusade with a negative attitude.  The likelihood of catching all three was..well, unlikely.  Especially Mama.  So I unwisely put off the trapping until the day before surgery.  The dreaded day came and started off wrong by snowing.  Also, I'd been advised to stop feeding them a couple days before trapping them.  I didn't have the heart to do this which was another strike against me.   

At least I'd taken the precaution of enticing and locking some of the nosier cats up on the big porch the night before trapping day.  And they had their breakfast on the porch..  But when Mama showed up, her breakfast would be waiting inside a trap.  Possum Lilly and Peggy would be dining the same way.  I baited the trap and watched out the window.  Before any of the ladies could show up, a nosy tiger named Clyde entered the trap and sprung it.  Cussing, I let him out and figured he had learned his lesson.  A few minutes later, I heard a horrendous racket on the little porch.  I rushed out and discovered Clyde, trapped for the second time.  I let him out once more, believing he couldn't possibly be stupid enough to do it again.  But a few minutes later he did it again.  This time, I picked up the howling Clyde-filled trap, carried it through the house and dumped him out onto the big porch with the other trouble makers.

Finally with Clyde out of the way, I was able to catch the last three ladies within a few hours.  They made their date with the vet.  There would be no more litters of kittens.  And the impossible had finally happened.  Mama was disarmed.