Kitten Paparazzi

Long-time Las Vegas animal rescuer Bobbi Klocker has told me on more than one occasion, that it's very important to ensure that we treat all of the cats with compassion and respect. It seemed too obvious to me to even need to be stated, but that was before I saw first hand how some people (even experienced trappers!) handle cats. The following are what I consider to be "best practices" for trapping and handling community cats with the compassion and respect they deserve!


ALWAYS HANDLE TRAPS WITH CATS GENTLY, AS THOUGH THEY CONTAIN, LIVING, FEELING, BREATHING BEINGS INSIDE.

If your handling a dozen traps (or in some cases 30 or 40), it's easy to start feeling like your hauling around a bunch of cargo. Guess what? Even if you have to load or unload 100, they should still be treated with the same respect you show your owned pet. Would you want your owned pets slammed around in trap because the folks handling him/her were too busy or lazy to treat the traps with care? As we ramp up and do more of these larger trapping projects, it is very important to maintain quality, and to ensure that we are treating animals with care and respect. If you follow this one rule, the rest of these should be common sense!

A PROPER TRAP COVER MEASURES 3' x 5'. ALWAYS HAVE A CORRECTLY SIZED COVER AVAILABLE SO YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY COVER THE TRAP.

The first time I returned traps to Keith, he berated me for my funky trap covers. Some of them were pillow cases which had been cut down one seam to form a crude tent which did not adequately cover the trap. "A proper trap cover is 3' X 5,'" he said. The importance of a proper trap cover cannot be overstated. If the cover is too large, it becomes a hindrance, catching on other traps or in the wheels of the clinic carts. Worse yet, if the cover is too small, it will fail to accomplish it's primary purpose, calming the cat! Our trap bank policy is to always issue a trap with a "proper" trap already inside. Make sure that you have that cover available and that you use it!


NEVER LEAVE A TRAP ARMED AND UNATTENDED!


I once set a trap near a plant nursery in a secure enough location that it could be left for short periods of time. When I returned to check the trap, I discovered a pissed-off, soaking wet, six-week old kitten. A nearby sprinkler had drenched him, the newspaper liner and the trap cover. We moved him into a dry trap with a towel and got him inside a vehicle and he was fine. But what if I had left that trap out for hours at a time, or worse yet, overnight? Once a cat become caught in your trap, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS SAFETY! If you cannot guarantee that someone will not be able to tamper with a trapped cat, or other harm will not befall the cat you shouldn't leave a trap armed and unattended.

NEVER OPEN A TRAP WITH A CONSCIOUS, ALERT CAT UNLESS YOU ARE INDOORS!

If the cat does make it out of the trap, it will be possible to use a noose pole or net to get control of it and get it back into the trap. Having a cat escape from a trap while it's outdoors is a disaster. If you and the cat are lucky, you are still at the cat's colony and you are simply left with cat who will never go near a trap again. If you and the cat are unlucky, you're halfway across the city when he escapes. Now you have an unfixed cat in unfamiliar territory who will never go near a trap again! To avoid this particular mistake, ensure that you are indoors when opening traps for any reason!

NEVER LET A CAT OUT OF THE TRAP WHEN IT EVENTUALLY HAS TO GO BACK INSIDE IT!

To minimize the stress on the animals, and maximize the safety of all humans and cats involved, cats should stay in the traps at all times before and after surgery. Moving cats into a larger container may seem the humane thing to do, but cats feel secure in small enclosed spaces. Forcing them from a trap to a carrier, kennel or other container is bound to cause the animal more stress. It also increases the risk of the cat escaping (how stressful will it be to recapture it?), scratching or biting someone, or being injured. If you have to hold a feral cat for an extended period of time, place the trap inside of a larger kennel. This gives the cat a place to retreat to when you need to feed/water/change paper. You can safely open and close the guillotine door with a stick through the kennel bars. Otherwise, do the cats and yourself a favor and leave them in the trap!


PROVIDE THE CAT WITH THE MOST COMFORTABLE CONDITIONS POSSIBLE WHILE IN THE TRAP!

Pre-surgery, these hardy animals can take a lot. Used to living outside, they will be okay in most circumstances, except for what should be glaring obvious examples. Don't leave the cats exposed to direct sun for an excessive amount of time. Even on nice days here it often becomes quite hot in the direct sunlight. A sealed vehicle interior will heat even faster. If you must transport traps in a pickup truck, especially in cooler weather, make sure the traps are covered in a way so that they are protected from the 40, 50, 60 or even 70 MPH winds generated by driving! Also, make sure your load is secure so that traps cannot fall over during transport. A Tru Catch trap that turns upside down will open!

Post surgery, the anesthesia affects a cat's ability to regulate it's temperature so they must be maintained in an area that will not have temperature extremes. Change newspaper, feed and water twice a day.  The cats pictured below are staged in Keith's garage. The traps rest on 2" x 4"'s which allow waste to drop down to the puppy pads below.













AVOID USING HAVAHART, TOMAHAWK AND OTHER SPRING-POWERED TRAPS.

Tru-Catch and other gravity powered traps depend on the weight of the door to operate. The chances of one of these doors harming a cat while closing, even a small kitten is minuscule. Spring powered traps depend on the energy stored by pushing the door into its open position, which compresses the spring. Cats have been found with tails and bodies crushed by the force of the door closing. Other cats have managed to wedge between the doors and the trap, either escaping out of the trap entirely, or choking to death because their bodies remain in the trap. Some models of these traps do not have guillotine doors making it difficult for clinic workers to transfer cats in or out. Others have a trap door made from a solid metal plate. These doors do no allow you to observe the cat, before you open the trap door, making it difficult to observe the cat while the trap is covered.  In both cases, these traps make staging and convalescing cats more difficult. Finally, the standardized size of the Tru-Catch traps allows more traps to fit into a smaller space more efficiently.