Well, I thought I saw a cat the night the chickens were attacked. It jumped like a cat, it was black and sleek, had a long, thin tail and nails that scratched the front of the coop upon its return. I think I may have talked myself out of it being a cat because we’ve never had any problems with cats and the chickens. Ever.
I got a trap on loan from a guy I work with and figured we could try to catch whatever it was.
Setting up the trap
First we had to set the trap. On our first attempt we actually caught…Kitty! So we had to bring him inside for the night. Then, about 2:30am, I heard the SNAP of the trap. I ran out to see what we caught. I couldn’t tell right away, but with the mewing I knew it was a cat. I left him out there till the sun rose and when I looked in, it was Atchpay! Atchpay completely tweaked out, he looks a bit psycho now…
Guess who? Atchpay
This stray that frequents our backyard fits the description of the perpetrator and got snagged in the trap about the same time. So we decided to relocate him just in case. He is pretty feral and definitely wasn’t comfortable being that close to me. We drove about 10 miles north of town. Cassie wanted to go further, but I felt we had gone far enough. We will see.
Atchpay’s New Home -A farm field out of town about 10 miles
For those of you that aren’t familiar with how a live trap works, Schnoodle will demonstrate the live trap. We put cheese in there all the way to the back, when she steps on the lever it shuts behind her.
The little guy was just starving and needed a good home. Dumping him in a field? That’s what they do in Puerto Rico. Very sad.
The dog thing is funny…. 🙂 he is so interested in the cheese…he does not care that the door shut behind him. I hope all is peaceful with your dad, I hate to see when people bring up their own suffering when you are sharing about yours, but let me tell you any way…in PR when you are talking to an elder, you should use “Don Petro” “Don Angel”…it is kind of a form of respect…my brothers and sisters grew up calling my dad “Don Daddy”….we loved him and respected him soo much…he left us 2 years ago and it still burns…I did not get to say goodbye…I was at the airport to go and see him when my sister call me and said he had died a few hours before I got on the plane…sorry…did not mean to go on….but it was along flight 🙁 spend as much time as you can with your favorite guy.
Katrina, we struggled with this one.
Our local humane society is not a no-kill shelter. Plus they won’t even take surrendered animals. If the humane society adopts out a cat, it has to be an indoor cat only (100% of the time). I don’t think that would have ever worked out with Atchpay.
We took in a stray once and named her Callie. She did not do very well living only in our house after a lifetime of being outdoors. When we saw Atchpay we wanted to help him and we fed him when he came by. He was always really sketchy and always fighting with Kitty. It is when he went after the chickens that we decided he was a problem. He was never raised around humans, you could tell. He was a cat from nature. When we came close to him, he would run off. When he was in the cage he just mewed and hissed. He would not have taken to a human home. Don’t get me wrong, I would never leave Kitty out there. He is a friendly cat and I don’t think he could survive without human intervention. But Atchpay is not Kitty…by a long shot.
I felt that relocating him to a different field was the most humane thing we could have done for him. He lived in a field behind our house, he has the skills to catch and eat mice, bugs and apparently chickens. We didn’t want to hand him over to animal control or the humane society because that would have meant certain death. At least this gives him a chance.
Perhaps we should have asked for opinions before we relocated him. Given our constraints, what should we have done instead? I thought we made a pretty good compromise for him and us.
Sometimes we have to make hard decisions that are not clearly right or wrong. Katrina, I’ve read on your blog about your decision not to save some of those baby chicks that you could have probably taken in and hand-raised like we did our chicks. Instead, they probably died. That makes me sad too…but I understand where you are coming from.
From our perspective, we felt like we needed to protect our chickens. We had tried to feed and befriend Atchpay (before this attack obviously), but that apparently didn’t work. The shelter isn’t accepting surrendered animals. Animal control would have just killed him And on the night that he attacked our chickens after hearing their screams, I felt like it too.
I think we acted rationally given that there were no really good solutions. We hope Atchpay has a good life, but that he never comes around our house again.
Our humane society stinks. They would have put this little guy to sleep, without a second thought. They are also overloaded, not only with the failing economy, but also because they took in a TON of cats because of a hoarding situation. In the long run, this little guy probably wouldn’t have lasted but 48 hours at the local shelter. While his life will be shortened due to being an outdoor cat, his was already on that path before Britton and Cassie ever intervened. Hopefully he will live out his life outside of the city limits eating mice and insects and being a cat.
P.S. Schnoodle is so obsessed with food and so deaf she just ignores the trap. We all had a good laugh about her reaction.. or should we say non-reaction.
I was just hoping he could be reformed. We don’t take in every cat that comes to our house – we have the same criteria – if they fight with the others we pop them with the BB gun and repeatedly chase them off. Just had a bad day yesterday, the neighbors problem boxer almost (and probably did) kill another neglectful neighbors puppy and of course all the puerto rican’s just watch the fight out their windows and the do-something american stones the animals until they split up. The boxer is a really bad dog and the other lady is a crazy dipshit whose dog will die from a bite infection (not from the original fight. The dark side of Puerto Rico. But then I took our new guy for shots (pet appointments cost more than human ones) and met a man who was there with one of the 20 cats he has taken in (Puerto Rican guy) trying to get help for one of his “real” cats (friendly one he loves) that was ill. PLenty of people at the vet with xrays etc doing the right thing. We talked about the situation and he said a lot of puerto rican’s “have no heart.” I just hope as a species we humans are on our way out!
I know you have proof, but please do not relax your guard on the chick attacker. It may not have been the feral cat. The relocated cat should be fine if it has some shelter for winter like an old barn, shed, to get out of the cold. In Pennsylvannia we had neighbors who had cats out all winter and they were fine in the barn in hay beds. Cats that start feral are difficult to domesticate. We have one that we found at 5 weeks old and is now a wonderful house cat. I believe the only way he adapted is because we lived in NYC in a 2 room apartment, and took the subway and car to PA on the weekends. We were all over him all of the time. He now sits, shakes paws on command, and knows words like window, play, daddy..I guess you get the idea..
I agree with Katrina, if it weren’t for people this planet would be a wonderful place.
Wil
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just eat the chickens and problem solved
Well, I disagre…this world is a better place because all God’s creatures are on it including ME. So I do not think this world would be a better place without me or you in it, remember, we are here because God wants us here.
I agree Rosa, we are part of this too! Plus we are talking about how to treat this kitty (and other animals) and I don’t think they would do the same for us.
If they could they’d just eat us and move along..lol.