Feral Female Farm Cat Caught

Good news on the homefront. Many of you may have read about the ongoing saga of Sweetie – one of the fertile feral females on the farm and how I've been trying to catch her on and off for about a year. Well, I caught her two evenings ago and she's now back home desexed and recuperating in our rumpus room, which overlooks her territory on the outside. The vet did a splendid job and she has dissolving stitches in her abdomen which means she doesn't have to make a return visit.

The entire experience has been traumatic for both the cat and myself because she trusted me and I felt as though I was betraying that trust when I caged her up and took her offsite for the operation. She's doing well now and is communicating with me again with her soft meow whenever I visit her. I paid extra for pain relief so I hope it's holding. I'll release her in the next 48 hours or so once I'm content there are no complications from the surgery. The best signal for me is that she appears to be relaxed and has eaten a lot since her return last night. This is a great relief. Her last litter was the Xmas kittens, which I've written about in the Chronicles of the Xmas Kittens series – two of which are sitting on a cushion right next to me in the office as I write this blog post. The emotional stress was a temporary discomfort to the long term stress of having the cats constantly reproducing when I'm trying to curtail the cat population on the farm, and then having to socialise and find loving homes for the kittens. I don't indiscriminately give kittens or cats away without checking out the character of the human companion who will be taking them. The quest is on now to find good homes for Sweetie's offspring.

At a later time I'll write a dedicated post on the subject of how to and how not to catch feral cats based on all the tricks I've learned during the last 12 months.