The Great Cat Round-Up!!!

I took myself down memory lane awhile back….

My Mom owned a horse boarding facility for many, many years. The barns are still in the family and since her passing are being managed by my brother. Mom’s passion was definitely horses – to the point that she almost had an obsession about them. Sometimes it was hard to drag her away from the barns because she very rarely wanted to let anyone else take care of her ‘babies’. She would many times reminisce about her youthful days working at a racetrack in southern California, mucking out stalls and periodically getting to ride one of the horses.

One of the drawbacks of owning a barn and acreage are the stray animals that wander in from time to time. Mom’s property is not too far out of town so it is very accessible to people who no longer want their pets. It always amazed me when people grew weary of their pets they would see a barn and think “Oh look that appears to be great home for you”, and the next morning when we would walk outside we would be greeted by a sad little face just wanting a home and some love. Over and over Mom would find new homes for these little drifters, call animal control or they would disappear after a day or so. The animals that stuck around the most were the stray cats. The cats LOVED the barns and would make themselves at home in the loft. Usually this was a good thing because it kept the mice/rat population down to an acceptable level. One year we had a couple of female cats show up and lo and behold they were both pregnant!! The cat population exploded very rapidly!! Within a year or so Mom had more than two dozen cats running around, some tame and some NOT so tame. It was beginning to get completely out of hand. One of the horse boarders, who happened to also volunteer for an animal rescue operation, brought out some cages and live traps. Over the next few days we made good progress catching a dozen of the cats, transporting them to the rescue shelter where they were evaluated for heath, their ability to be placed with a family …etc. As the days went by we had to get more creative with our capture techniques, as we were getting down to the wilder side of the crowd! This is where it began to get exciting…

I had one little female picked out who seemed to be fairly friendly but would not allow me to pick her up….so…the genius in me came up with a plan. I donned a winter parka, put on some heavy duty gloves, set up the cage with the door wide open and forged on with my plan…. Pet the nice little kitty until she was comfortable with the gloves, then grab the back of her neck nice and tight so she would freeze up, because that’s what cat’s do, right? WRONG….she froze up for all of 30 seconds…then her survival factor kicked in and over-rode the freeze factor!! Her head began to slowly swivel around like some demon-possessed medusa and I knew I was in trouble. I was making my way rapidly towards the cage but realized I wasn’t going to make it before she made contact with my exposed wrist. Why didn’t I let go you ask? Beats the heck out of me…remember that wasn’t part of my original plan!! Eventually I did let go, but instead of running away she latched onto my leg and began to sink her teeth into my knee…NOW we’re into the survival of the fittest!! I grabbed her tail….and she begins to curl back up towards me…I start swinging slowly around in a circle using the force to keep her away from me. In the mean time, my audience had increased by two-fold….laughing hysterically, I might add!! I tried to line her up with the cage opening after a couple more revolutions; I then let her go and hoped for the best. Alas, I missed by a mile. She disappeared for a couple days but we eventually caught her in one of the live traps. I highly doubt that poor kitty would ever be a good candidate for a family to adopt because of the trauma I inflicted on her. A cat wrangler…I am not, and I now have two perfectly matched fang scars on my leg to remember this event by.