Sitting in the cold and dark the other night waiting for traps to spring, I listened in amazement to the story behind this feral colony of cats…

The daughter of the property’s owner gave her mom an unspayed female ten years ago. The cat was allowed to be an indoor/outdoor critter. Of course she became pregnant, dropped her kittens outdoors, and the colony began.

Each successive litter added to the population, although many were given away, eaten by coyotes, hit by cars (it’s a BUSY street), or just disappeared. If only we had been called then; many innocent lives would have been saved.

No one really knows how many cats there are now, but we were after a reported 25 of them that weekend. As the colony has expanded its territory, reports have been filtering in from annoyed neighbors about problem feral cats.

Now it is night two of trapping. Our first night netted us 11 cats, six of which were female. There was also a sick kitten about four months of age. Of the remaining four males, one severely bloodied his nose in his attempt to claw his way out of the trap, this in a matter of about two minutes before we could transfer him to a smaller covered cage.

After their surgeries, all but the kitten who went home with meds, the veterinarian told us that the two light-colored females had skin cancer on their ears. Due to this, their ears couldn’t be tipped. She also mentioned that all the females had had kittens this season. No big surprise to us, but where were all the offspring?

The litter sizes were larger than normal this year, so I’m guessing that there must have been a minimum of 30 kittens born, if the females only had one litter apiece. More likely, they had at least two resulting in 50- 60 kittens.

We can understand the wariness of adult ferals side-stepping the traps we set, but the kittens should have been easy catches. We only caught the single sick one. The man on the property mentioned that he had buried two or three kittens recently, and that they had also been sick.

That still left a couple of dozen or more missing, now presumably dead. It appears that all this unnecessary breeding has been nothing but a traffic hazard and a food source for the local coyotes that run the creek behind the house. Disease obviously also played a big part, and that is such a horrific, lingering death.

My fellow board member and I only managed to catch 13 cats in two nights of trying. The adults were all taken in for surgery and vaccinations and were released back on the property after a day or two, to breed no more.

All this sadness from just one unspayed female running loose ten years ago. Please spay and neuter your animals.