Wait … that’s not a kitten!
RAPS staff get a shock when they see what’s inside the trap they set to catch a feline family.
For a quarter-century, RAPS has been humanely trapping feral cats. Every now and then – such as this week – we catch more than we bargained for.
That was the case when Mandy Lichtmann, RAPS’ volunteer and outreach coordinator, went to check one of the humane traps she has set up at an industrial site near the river. Employees at one local company contacted RAPS when they saw kittens darting in and out among some of their giant shipping containers. The staff managed to capture one kitten – a docile male – but couldn’t get the other kitten or the mother. Mandy set up some traps.
As she approached the site on a rainy morning, she could see the animal inside and believed she had caught a black-and-white kitten. As she got closer, she realized it wasn’t a kitten. The trap had inadvertently attracted a skunk.
Freeing a trapped skunk is, unsurprisingly, a delicate task. Approaching from behind, Mandy slowly lifted the trap door – after aligning the video on her phone to record the interaction for posterity. See the video below.
“Skunks don’t see very well,” says Mandy, so she hoped maybe the stinker wouldn’t notice her nonchalantly standing behind the trap. No such luck. “He walked out and noticed there was a human standing there. He let out a couple of squirts, but he missed me thankfully because it’s really noxious.”
In the end, there was no harm except a minor affront to the nostrils. The skunk wandered back to its affairs.
Mandy successfully trapped the other kitten but, so far, we have been unable to trap the mom. Employees say they haven’t seen her around and Mandy suspects that, once she realized her kittens were gone, she may have moved on.
RAPS began 26 years ago with a few deeply dedicated volunteers trapping stray and feral cats and kittens. For the first couple of years, we did not have the RAPS Cat Sanctuary, so we practiced TNR – “trap, neuter, release.” While this is not an ideal strategy for the individual cats – living in the wilds is never ideal for domestic cats – it at least prevented more unwanted litters. When the Sanctuary opened, in 1999, we ended TNR and now trapped cats who are too feral to be adopted come to live a life of luxury at the Sanctuary. In cases where cats can be socialized, such as when they are trapped as kittens, or if they are amenable to human interaction because, say, they had been fed by well-meaning people, they can be adopted.
In Richmond, the SPCA is responsible now for stray cats (and other pets). RAPS continues the work we have always done trapping ferals. (If you have lost or found a pet, contact the SPCA.) To do this, we depend on members of the public to be our eyes on the ground.
“We’ve been quite busy with the public and employees at different companies contacting us,” says Mandy. Recently, several companies that operate in industrial areas have contacted us to deal with cats on their premises. These are very often colonies and it is inevitably a multiple-day affair to confidently say we have saved all the cats on the premises.
In another case, a man who lives adjacent to farmland has been feeding cats and kittens but was concerned when his landlord sold the property and gave the tenant notice. He was afraid of what might happen to the animals after he moved. He called RAPS and, together, we began trapping about 30 cats. Every day or so, he calls RAPS and we go pick up another one or two!
Unlike truly feral animals, many of these, especially the young ones, will likely be adopted to forever families, because human interaction is not entirely strange to them.
“These cats and kittens have a little experience with humans, so they do have some comfort,” Mandy says.
Almost all animals are scared when they are trapped, but the way the animals behave in the trap and when they are first brought back for exams is rarely indicative of their usual personalities.
“It’s scary to be stuck in a trap,” Mandy says. “They usually get trapped overnight when they’re out and about looking for food sources. I normally check the trap several times a day but mostly find them early mornings so they have been in the trap overnight.”
In many cases, a scared cat settles down quickly after being released and acclimating to a new environment. If they have been fed by people, they tend to be a little more chill.
After a quarter-century of RAPS doing this work in Richmond, the island city has comparatively few feral cats. Surrey, by comparison, is estimated to have tens of thousands.
To ponder the impacts of this work, imagine just one single cat we recently trapped on a farm. She is pregnant with what our vets think is probably nine or 10 kittens. Instead of giving birth outdoors in the outdoors, surrounded by predators and inclement weather, she is safe and cared for at the home of Kati DeGraaf, our designated angel for pregnant mamas and newborn kittens.
But imagine what it would have meant if we had not trapped her. The idea of a mama with so many kittens living in the cold, wet and barren outdoors is heartbreaking. Beyond the individual impacts, though, she would have had nine or 10 babies who, in a few months, could themselves reproduce, easily quadrupling in number. Population growth among feral cats is exponential and so getting at the problem early is critical to success.
We will continue to do this work – and we thank the members of the public who notify us and help us set and monitor the traps. As usual, everything we accomplish is due to the support of animal allies in our community!
