I should retitle this thread to "Feral cat noise: the never-ending saga".
It's been mostly quiet since August. We never caught any more critters, and we put the trap away after Labor Day. We've had sporadic sightings of the cats around the neighborhood, particularly Boots & Cujo. We continue to have cat droppings on our lanai and our sidewalk. The landlady's sister-in-law continues to visit the rental property to restock the outdoor cat food dishes on its front porch, despite even their tenant's wishes to be left alone. Several of our neighbors are complaining now, and the other day I saw a rat hanging around their driveway. But the sister-in-law remains obdurate, convinced that the cat welfare is more important than a bunch of neighborhood whiners.
A neighbor gave us the second-hand followup on our last cat-trapping episode. Boots and Cujo both had chips, and they were for the landlord. The Hawaii Humane Society called the chip's phone number (disconnected) and sent snail mail to its address. The snail mail ended up being forwarded from what was now rental property to their new home in the Bay Area, where the landlord called her sister-in-law (one town over from us) to go parole the felines. They (I'm talking about the felines here) spent 10 days in custody before being released on their own recognizance near the scene of their original crimes.
In other words, the courts let us down.
Last month we had another mating flareup between a feral male (who's apparently way too smart to take the trap bait) and one of the females. (Now I'm talking about the cats, not the landlords or tenants.) The caterwauling (literally) woke me up at 1:30 AM. I sneaked down to the driveway and practically had my hands on the male before he noticed me, and it was fun to watch his evasive reaction. But we hauled our trap back out of the attic and set it up on the sidewalk.
After this noisy flareup, once again we baited the trap with stinky cat food and stinky tuna... and we waited. I'm pretty sure the rat was overwhelmed with choices, but the next two weeks were supremely boring repetitions of checking the trap 3x/daily. (Apparently the rat is too light to trigger the cat trap's pivoting floor panel, but I'll bait a separate live rat trap for that guy.) After a while we ran out of ideas and kept up the routine, but at least it was quiet at night.
Then a few days ago we came home from surfing and sonofagun, the trap was triggered. I pulled the sheet off the top-- well, hello Boots! Apparently the last trapping session was of negligible long-term training value.
Instead of driving the cat back to the lenient feline juvie court, we drove it six miles to a secure undisclosed [-]location[/-] neighborhood by a farm. We opened the cage door and the Boots headed straight for the barn. I hope it's happy. I mean the cat, not the barn.
Less than 48 hours later spouse looked out our livingroom window onto the front lanai and saw what looked like Boots curled up on our slider sofa. Upon further examination it turned out to be a slightly fatter but close approximation of Boots, probably a sibling. (Still no sign of Cujo.) Boots2 scampered out of our yard onto the adjacent sewage pumphouse property and hid in the field behind it.
So yesterday we baited the trap with catnip. We'll see how that works out.
I'm sure the rat is unhappy about the trap menu, but our guava tree is probably supporting a whole family of those critters.
It's been mostly quiet since August. We never caught any more critters, and we put the trap away after Labor Day. We've had sporadic sightings of the cats around the neighborhood, particularly Boots & Cujo. We continue to have cat droppings on our lanai and our sidewalk. The landlady's sister-in-law continues to visit the rental property to restock the outdoor cat food dishes on its front porch, despite even their tenant's wishes to be left alone. Several of our neighbors are complaining now, and the other day I saw a rat hanging around their driveway. But the sister-in-law remains obdurate, convinced that the cat welfare is more important than a bunch of neighborhood whiners.
A neighbor gave us the second-hand followup on our last cat-trapping episode. Boots and Cujo both had chips, and they were for the landlord. The Hawaii Humane Society called the chip's phone number (disconnected) and sent snail mail to its address. The snail mail ended up being forwarded from what was now rental property to their new home in the Bay Area, where the landlord called her sister-in-law (one town over from us) to go parole the felines. They (I'm talking about the felines here) spent 10 days in custody before being released on their own recognizance near the scene of their original crimes.
In other words, the courts let us down.
Last month we had another mating flareup between a feral male (who's apparently way too smart to take the trap bait) and one of the females. (Now I'm talking about the cats, not the landlords or tenants.) The caterwauling (literally) woke me up at 1:30 AM. I sneaked down to the driveway and practically had my hands on the male before he noticed me, and it was fun to watch his evasive reaction. But we hauled our trap back out of the attic and set it up on the sidewalk.
After this noisy flareup, once again we baited the trap with stinky cat food and stinky tuna... and we waited. I'm pretty sure the rat was overwhelmed with choices, but the next two weeks were supremely boring repetitions of checking the trap 3x/daily. (Apparently the rat is too light to trigger the cat trap's pivoting floor panel, but I'll bait a separate live rat trap for that guy.) After a while we ran out of ideas and kept up the routine, but at least it was quiet at night.
Then a few days ago we came home from surfing and sonofagun, the trap was triggered. I pulled the sheet off the top-- well, hello Boots! Apparently the last trapping session was of negligible long-term training value.
Instead of driving the cat back to the lenient feline juvie court, we drove it six miles to a secure undisclosed [-]location[/-] neighborhood by a farm. We opened the cage door and the Boots headed straight for the barn. I hope it's happy. I mean the cat, not the barn.
Less than 48 hours later spouse looked out our livingroom window onto the front lanai and saw what looked like Boots curled up on our slider sofa. Upon further examination it turned out to be a slightly fatter but close approximation of Boots, probably a sibling. (Still no sign of Cujo.) Boots2 scampered out of our yard onto the adjacent sewage pumphouse property and hid in the field behind it.
So yesterday we baited the trap with catnip. We'll see how that works out.
I'm sure the rat is unhappy about the trap menu, but our guava tree is probably supporting a whole family of those critters.
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