The Little Ninja Saga - Episode IV: A New Hope?

(Originally published Dec 3, 2011)

 

As I soon discovered, getting your hands on a live trap free of charge is a little more difficult that you would imagine. The trick was that we would need it for about a week and this was also going to be a single-use endeavour. I mean, I’m hoping to not have to trap another live animal in the near future... or ever. For best results, we needed a thoroughly clean or uncontaminated trap. When an animal gets caught, there’s usually a bit of pee or more importantly some type of pheromone related to fear or stress. It’ll mark the cage as being unsafe. If little miss scaredy cat could ‘smell’ that something had been trapped before, she would never go into it and of course we would never catch her.

 

I called around to some of the local animal shelters (specifically BCSPCA and the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association) assuming that they would have a plethora of traps…. and would be gracious enough to lend them out. Nope. They had a limited supply and needed to use them for their own means. That’s fair enough. I also called around to some pest control agencies (knowing that the size of trap I was looking for is intended for raccoons). I thought maybe they would let us borrow one (or rent for cheap)… just to use their equipment instead of using their services. Annnd nope. Some would rent them out on a weekly basis for $200, which was a bit steep for us at the time. Home Depot had them for purchase (at $100) but they too did not “rent” them out like they do with some of their other equipment.

 

Luckily, Cheryl made contact with a gentleman from a local small pest control company, Green Valley Pest Control, I think. The guy she spoke with had an extra raccoon trap that we could just simply borrow... for the week… no charge… in fact he’d deliver it. Too good to be true? Nope, just an awesome helpful guy. The next Wednesday after work, voilà! a live trap was waiting by our door.

As I mentioned previously, consistency was the key to trapping anything, especially this little kitty. Once it knew when and where the food was going to be, it would start to wait for it. At this point, the kitty would come in the morning to feed usually within 2 minutes after placing the dish outdoors and calling her (well, just calling “pretty girl” since we didn’t know her name). Now that we had the trap, we had to starting by leaving it outdoors, with the trap unset, door locked open (very important here), and the food inside. I would need her to start going into the cage to eat. She knew what the food was, but now we had to present it within something new… but still make her safe. I understood, we would need at least three days for her to feel comfortable to eat from this cage… we were going to try it in two (yeah, rebels, I know, huh?). Once we gave her this false sense of security after a few days, we would obviously crush her spirits with this giant metal trap…like a teenager after a breakup, she may never trust again. It was the only way.

So right outside our door, the cage was left in the morning with food inside Thursday and Friday. After calling her name and placed the dish, she came quite quickly the first day. I stood in my usual position, behind my kitchen table eating cereal and drinking coffee in the dark… with barely a view of the cage where I was hoping the kitty would not see me. It took her about 10 minutes of walking around the cage and smelling it, ten minutes of waiting, ten minutes of determining if this cage was safe. Fortunately, hunger won and she eventually went in. Friday morning, she did it in 2 minutes.

Note: We brought the trap back inside just before I went to work, just in case the trap was stolen during the day.

In the meantime, we had converted our second bedroom into a kitty oasis where we can place the Little Ninja in order to help acclimate to a life indoors. What used to be (and had been for the last 3 years) a storage room wanting to be an office, that room was totally cleaned out. Stuff went to second hand stores, other stuff was “dealt with”, even more was shoved and configured to fit into our closets. Finally after 3 years, clean floor space was exposed, closet doors could close, and our desk and bookshelves were accessible again. But then we filled it up with kitty litter, kitty food bowls, a climbing tower, and seating for us when we wanted to try to bond with the Little Ninja. Cheryl even devised a little hidey-hole under the desk, where Ninja could escape and feel comfortably hidden… just in case she needed more time to adjust on her own.

Saturday was the big Kitty Trap Day we had planned. We figured it would be an easy start to the weekend just to continue the consistent pattern… I would get up at 5:30am, as usual, get the trap set and get the food ready. Cheryl would wake up and get ready (difficult to do on a Saturday morning). We would be fully dressed, jackets on, shoes on, wallet and keys in hand. By 6:10, kitty would try to eat. By 6:10:01, kitty would be caught. By 6:30am we would be at Atlas Animal Hospital, the only 24hour vet clinic we knew about. Within hours, we would be home and warm again with a kitty in our laps. Seemed simple enough… but “best laid plans” and all that, I guess.

Yes, the food was in the cage. Yes, the cage was set. Yes, the house was dark and I sat watching the cage with eerie suspense. But no, the Little Ninja did not take the bait. Maybe she sensed my anxiety, my tension… like how dogs seem to feel that ‘energy’ kinda. After 10 minutes, I did spot a black shadow walk by the cage… but she did not go in. After 30 minutes, I was a bit hopeful, so I was going to the back room to check online for the Atlas clinic’s phone number. While I was in the back, Cheryl called to me. The kitty had gone to the cage entrance, she had stepped inside, may have touched the food (hard to tell in the dark), but did not set off the trap… and she ran away very quickly. Maybe she knew it was a trap, maybe not… either way, this was going through my head for the next 3 hours:

 

 

For the next hour, I stood by the kitchen table watching the cage outside. Cheryl laid down on the couch a few feet away, wearing her jacket and shoes. Our lights were still off, it was dark outside, and I couldn’t tell the difference anymore between shadows, leaves flying about, or an actual pure black kitty. My eyes were playing tricks on me.

After an hour, Cheryl went back to bed to wait (she never did fall back to sleep, though). Out of sheer persistence and bull-headedness, I couldn’t move. I stood guard for 3 hours, barely moving, watching the cage, drinking coffee after coffee, seeing no further signs … but eventually seeing the sun rise. At one point, I went for a walk around the block to find the kitty. I spotted her down the block, sitting under a tree next to the school. Odd place since I have never seen her beyond our yard and the yard of our neighbours.

By 10 o’clock, Cheryl came back out of the bedroom. As if on cue, Ani, the cat from upstairs, came scratching at out back door… like she has every weekend for years. I jumped outside and grabbed the trap… hoping Ani wouldn’t set it off accidentally. She was never really food-oriented anyhow, so there shouldn’t have been such a fear. Ani came in and we played a bit before she went back out to explore. With Ani loose and defending her territory, with no new sign of the Ninja, and with the cage back indoors… the Trap Day was aborted. Discouraged and a bit defeated, we were uncertain if this would even work.

~~ ~~

The next chance would be to catch her at her evening feeding time. We witnessed her eating a couple times after I came home from work, so we figured we’d try again at 5:00pm… just hoping it’d work. We went about our usual Saturday, with shopping and groceries and a little drive around town to collect everything else we needed for our second room/kitty oasis. By 2pm, we were home again. I took a peak ‘round the corner and saw the Little Ninja on the fence between the 2 houses. This was her usual perch where she could be “safe”, but was commonly harassed by Ani and Saffi from the deck upstairs (and just a few feet away). Those upstairs cats were pretty good about defining their territory, and this poor little black kitty rightfully didn’t belong.

Knowing the cat was out, I thought that this’d be good chance to try to feed her (and trap her). So out came the cage and the food. I called her name…. and would see if nature would take its course. But within a minute, freakin’ Wex shows up instead! Out of nowhere! This hungry, food driven, white cat would definitely set off the trap and ruin to whole deal. I quickly jumped out again and chased Wex away (see previous post about the Wex story)

After a couple more minutes, I tried the trap again. Called the kitty. And now Ani walks by again! So again, I brought the cage back in and tried to chase Ani away.

Another 15 minutes later, I walk around to house and I don’t see the kitty… and better yet, no sign of any cat. Hopefully Wex had gone home, hopefully Ani was having adventures further down the road… hopefully the Little Ninja was hungry. So out comes the cage… again. I could see the black kitty sitting on the fence now… but what I didn’t see was Ani on the deck above giving her the ol’ staredown. Obviously the Little Ninja wasn’t going anywhere. I brought the cage closer…,and freakin’ Wex shows up again! Seriously, it was like the Benny Hill theme should have been played. With these 2 other guys hanging around, with me jumping in and out of the house, with the cage rattling it’s way in & out of our yard, the Little Ninja wasn’t going to try anything at all.

I gave up.

I would have to wait until the next morning and try this all again.



The Little Ninja Saga - Episode III

(Originally published Nov 20, 2011)

Every morning, I left the food outside our door in hopes of attracting the poor abandoned kitty, the Little Ninja. Luckily it did seem as though she was hungry enough to leave her comfort zone and venture into our territory for breakfast and dinner. I would watch her eat in the morning as I sat in the kitchen with the lights off, sipping my coffee and finishing my cereal. She would come now within about 5 minutes after I placed the food out and called to her. We felt better knowing that she was finally eating properly… but it seemed that she wasn’t the only one who was getting a good meal.

After the first couple days, we noticed a second cat getting its fill. A white and creamy looking cat, with some adorable, almost seal point light orange colouring. Cute bugger. Unlike the scared black kitty from next door, this big guy was possibly the friendliest creature to sneak into our backyard. As soon as it saw me, when I caught it eating out our food dish, it came right up to me, jumped up to nudge its head on my knee, and circled around my feet. Obviously friendly. Obviously domesticated. Obviously previously owned. Likely homeless too.

It came back every day afterwards. It would come to our door in the evening, whimper out a ‘mew’ and sit and wait for me to come out with more food… or just to give it some company. I would sit outside with it. Rub its cute little ears. Play with it a bit. And it was so vocal. Mewing and mewing all the time. We let it into the house a couple times, just to see what it would do. It would sneak around, smell stuff, and at one point just sat on the couch to clean itself. It was almost too friendly and too vocal. Cheryl understood that some pregnant cats get super friendly, and noisy, and super hungry … but is this what was happening? Were we feeding a pregnant cat too?

The question was now… do we save 2 cats. Still unsure if we can even trap the black kitty, we knew that this white cat would jump at the chance for a new home. Cheryl and I threw the thought around of trying to raise two cats… especially trying to keep them indoors since the other 2 cats that lived upstairs had full right the territory outside our door. I was actually kinda excited about having 2 cats, one black and one white. It lent itself well to matching names like “Amos & Andy” or “Checkers & Chess”, but all that was running in my mind was the song “Ebony and Ivory”…. and I’m pretty sure we would be hard pressed to make them “live in perfect harmony”. We didn’t know what to do really, with 2 cats. Should we get them both? Do you capture both but send one to SPCA? Do we rescue one and leave the other to fend for herself? If so, which one? The needy or the possibly pregnant?

In the end, we decide that the black one needed our help the most, but it also needed a quiet stress-free life indoors… which meant no other competition, no other cat. We would rescue Little Ninja and take the cream one to the SPCA. She was friendly enough to quickly be adopted. She could easily fall in love with anybody just willing to pet her. The black one, on the other hand, would be a challenge… and we were already willing to accept that challenge. Any possible, unsuspecting, future owner may not be as willing or as ready to deal with it. So the decision was made. Trap them both… one to keep, one to give to a new home.

Something was nagging me in the back of my mind, though. This cream cat that we had been feeding was just too friendly. Was it really an abandoned cat at all? Or was it just a lucky sneaky bugger looking for a free meal away from her real home? There was only one way to tell… try to find her owner. A couple options for contact seemed possible. We could post on Craigslist, something like a “cat found” ad… but that would depend on if the cat was really lost and if the owner somehow managed to specifically look for her on Craigslist. We could also put up some “cat found” posters… but I had a lot of trouble getting a good picture (always blurry, and too dark). And was getting discouraged with having a suitable poster,

A light bulb came on when we realized the best chance of finding this girl’s owner… if there was any. The only connection between us and the cat’s owner would simply be the cat. We had to send a massage with the cat… like a carrier pigeon. I went out and bought a collar (since it didn’t wear one already). Cheryl wrote a nice note on small piece of paper. A simple note to the effect of “We have been feeding your cat; are you the owner; we are about to adopt it; call us at … “. That evening when the big white cat came by again, I went outside to play with it, collar (with note attached) in hand. It took a couple of tries, since she got a bit squirmy, but the message was placed and I let her go home. It was just a waiting game now.

20 minutes later we get the call. Seems this white cat did in fact have an owner. Cheryl had the pleasure of taking the call and was able to explain our situation. What we thought was a pregnant cat, was actually a male named Wex. Wex had been a rescue already, back in Seattle. The owners were a couple who had recently moved to town. It seems his current owners welcomed him into their house after his life as an alley cat. He was never one to stay indoors, but he was good at finding his way around the neighbourhood. I guess his skills in the alley helped him find the batch of free food we happened to leave out for him every day.

With that little mystery solved. We opted to take better control of the food, in an effort to ween him off of our friendly meal. We also had to redouble and focus our efforts in trying to trap the Little Ninja and bring her into our home.

To be continued…

The Little Ninja Saga - Episode II

(Originally published Nov 17, 2011)

 

So now we have decided that we have to save this poor helpless abandoned kitty that our neighbours left behind when they moved out. Our first obvious major obstacle was going to be catching it. She had been alone for a couple weeks already, fending for herself (with the help of some dry food the neighbours did happen to leave). She was so scared and skittish. Simply by making eye contact she would run away to her secret hidey-hole by the neighbours’ garbage cans. This is where google came in handy… if only to help me & Cheryl to set-up some type of time line for attack, and to take advantage of all the little tricks that seem to work for others (meaning less trial and error on our part).

As anybody would expect, food was apparently the easiest way to trap a live animal. Knowing that this poor little kitty probably hasn’t had a full prepared meal in a while (now that the bag of food left behind was depleted), we figured she’s gotta be pretty hungry. Laura & Immanuel had already made a couple successful attempts to feed the Little Ninja. Laura used some of the extra cat wet food her cats, placed it on a dish and sat in the little side alley between our house and the next. The kitty was hungry enough to overcome her fear of people, and after some time decided to munch her way desperately through the wet food with Laura only a few feet away. Immanuel had done the same and apparently managed to stand only 1 foot away! So we knew it was possible to lure the little kitty… like an ice cream truck driving by a school yard.



Just a simple trick to lure in the hungry

Our first step would be to put out some food. We had an extra food dish laying around already from the year before, when we thought the neighbours were originally going to ditch and leave the kitty behind. At the time, we would just put out a couple of pieces of Temptations… but that never really worked and the kitty never fed back then (it still had a home, so why would it come over to us?). I picked up some dry food, just your middle of the road high-protein bag of Whiskas. I didn’t want to be cheap, but I also wasn’t sure if this plan would work so I limited my investment, I guess. I could’ve gone more expensive and get the really delicious stuff, but the kitty was probably hungry and hopefully not too picky.

Apparently, the key to a successful trap was consistency. Every morning when I got out of bed and got ready for work, my first task was to fill a bowl for food, another for water and take it outside. We weren’t sure where to put the food though, where to keep the food so it’ll be visible, where the kitty would be comfortable eating, and where we can easily keep an eye on it. In the end, I got a bit lazy. I knew the cat had sometimes wandered past our front door… so our area was a little on her daily route. So, yep, I opened the door and plopped the 2 bowls right in front of our door where I can just stand back and watch the feeding begin. The other helpful trick was knowing that her original owner (the crackhead girl) would often call the kitty “pretty girl” (but we never confirmed any ‘real’ name). Every morning at 6:00am, I would open the door, rattle the food, call “pretty girl” and step back to continue with my day (shaving, ironing and such).

 

Nothing was witnessed the first couple of days… but since we did leave the food out all throughout the day, some food was definitely eaten before we got back from work. Only half empty after the first couple days. Later, it was completely empty. After the 3^rd day, I did see that in the time between setting the food dish out in the morning and me going to work (about 45 minutes), some food was even eaten then. A couple more days of food being eaten right after I place it outside, we knew she was waiting for it, expecting it. That is why consistency was the key to this all, I guess. On the 5^th day, I even saw her eating from the dish, in the afternoon after work as I pulled up the car next to the house. I didn’t want to scare her, so I just sat there in the car waiting for her to finish. Only took about 10 minutes, but I was happy to actually see her eating.

The really unexpected part about this whole endeavour (but we really should have seen it coming)… was that the poor black Little Ninja was not the only cat we attracted. I guess word got out that there was a free meal sitting outside of the door all day long. That was how we met the mysterious and friendly white cat.

To be continued...