It's that time of the month again for TNR

Our trapping team and several caretakers have been trap training cats the past couple weeks for the spay/neuter clinic today. Trap training involves setting up a feeding location, feeding cats on a regular schedule, and getting the cats accustomed to the traps being around their feeding spot. Once they are comfortable with the traps, you can even deactivate the traps and place food in them so that the cats get used to going inside them for their food. This greatly helps when trapping time comes around!

But a challenge that presents itself for the larger colonies is that if you are not able to catch them all the first time around then the next time you trap, you'll have a mix of fixed and un-fixed cats going into the traps. So our main trapper, Barb, setup a trail cam to determine how many cats may be left at the large colony we TNVRed back in January (in which over 30 have now been fixed). After hours upon hours of going through the photos, she determined there were 4 remaining cats at that location - 3 of whom were coming on a regular schedule and 1 who showed up at irregular intervals (these are the hardest ones to trap).

Twelve traps were setup at least a week in advance for trap training purposes. It is always helpful to have more traps than the number of cats you need to trap, especially when there are plenty of fixed cats hanging around who might trigger them. And sure enough, several already fixed cats went into the traps and triggered them. You would think after being trapped and neutered before, they would stay away, but apparently being neutered wasn't enough of a deterrence for them!

At this one location, we were able to trap 2 of the 4 cats who were seen on the trail cam, which unfortunately did not include the elusive kitty who showed up at irregular times. However, we also ended up with 2 newbies who weren't seen on the trail cam at all! So a total of 4 from this spot were TNVRed today. That still leaves 2 so we'll be back at it again next time.

In addition to the 4 above, 16 cats were brought in from several other locations, bringing the total to 20 for today. But it is important to realize that although we've primarily been posting about these larger clinics, it's not the only TNVR action going on during the month. Our team assists caretakers with doing their own TNVR and we help trap smaller colonies that go into the vet on other days. So it may be 20 cats today, but the total for the month will be higher (January and February numbers combined were 101!).

To continue this work, support is always needed. Volunteers and donations are two very important needs right now.

If interested in volunteering: pawsandlove.net/volunteer
If you'd like to support TNVR work financially: pawsandlove.net/tnr

As always, thank you for your support.