Satsuma

A short story by Elizabeth Cava

Aug 17, 2001

As a feral cat trapper, it’s always the one that I missed that haunts me.

The one that won’t go in the trap.

Incoming call to Best Friends Catnippers’ hotline:  “Please help!  Starving, stray cats are getting run over in the street.”

Satsuma Street Site:  North Hollywood, California.

Site History:  Elderly man feeding 18 cats dies.  Bank takes over.  Property sits vacant in limbo.  The 18 cats?  Left on their own.  To starve.

Neighborhood agrees to feed these now-feral (or wild) cats if we implement trap/neuter/return, a humane alternative to trapping and killing.

Carla Lawson and I set up 5 humane cat traps, bait them with tuna, a feral cat’s preferred lure of choice.  Of the surviving 10 cats left, we immediately trap 5 cats.

One sun-soaked, dehydrated orange tabby kitten, smaller than my hand, is collapsed against a wall, lying on his back, all resistance gone.  He’s not moving — his orange fur blending into the dead orange leaves.  I hand pluck him and put him against my heart.  His eyes are caked shut with dried green discharge, an advanced sign of respiratory infection.

“Carla,” I croak, “he’s dead.”

Carla cries.

We both stand at Satsuma site, hardened trappers crying for one we didn’t miss, but it’s still too late for.

The orange kitten takes a sudden, shuddering gasp of air, as if awakening from a deep dream.

I nearly drop him.

Carla gets us moving.  Carla always gets us moving.  “Get in the car!  He needs fluids!!”

The tiny orange tabby kitten is taken to the Catnippers’ spay/neuter clinic for feral cats.  The kitten is fostered, but his reprieve from Satsuma is brief, and he dies a month later.

Carla and I go back to Satsuma Street and trap/neuter/return another 4 cats — 2 other orange kittens we hand trap but also die less than a month later.

One we miss.  She is a pale orange, long-haired tabby.  She gazes down at us serenely from her safe haven, an old tree decaying in the backyard ruins of this dilapidated house.

The last breeding female at Satsuma.  She will not go in the trap.

Two months later.  I find myself back at Satsuma in a shed.  I’ve come to hate this painful site.  I’ve barricaded the shed door with wood — to keep the three kittens I’ve followed from escaping.  I’m “bucketing” — handtrapping the orange tabby’s latest litter of 5 week old kittens.  It’s a trapper’s last resort, when you’ve got a breeding female who won’t go in the trap.

The shed is claustrophobic and full of cobwebs.  It smells bad.  I’ve got one carrier and gloves.

I reach down to gently pluck the first kitten out of the shed’s broken drywall.

As I get close, I hear a terrible growl, a sound that goes right through me.  I look up, and I’m eye to eye with the orange tabby.  The Queen of the Colony, the Mother, the one that I missed.

Eye to eye, and she is warning me.

I pull my hand away from her kitten, slowly.  I step back.

I realize I’m trapped in a shed with a feral female and her young.  With nothing but a carrier and a pair of gloves.  The danger to me is clear.  One bite, one scratch equals a 75% risk of infection.  Do I feel like hanging out at St. Joe’s Hospital with an IV drip tonight?

I can’t leave.  If I leave, I’ll never get her.  If I get her — I stop the suffering.  No more sick kittens.

I sweat and try to stay calm for at least 1/2 hour in the shed.  I strategize.  I yoga breathe.  Once I feel my courage return, I wedge drywall between the tabby and her kittens.  I handpluck the kittens one at a time and put them in a cardboard box.  The last one fights, bites all the way through the glove, but I pull my fingers back and evade the needle-sharp teeth.  5 weeks old and already amazing fighters.  I rip off the glove and double-check my fingers – no punctures – no blood.  Things are looking up.

I’m losing the light.  The shed gets darker.  Shadows play tricks on my eyes.  I maneuver the carrier into the drywall — block up all other exits.  The orange tabby has only one way to go — forward into the carrier.  I send her a telepathic thought.  Please just go forward, and it will be all right.  I sit in that shed a long time.

She goes forward.  I close the carrier door and she is finally, mercifully, trapped.

My breath flows out with the relief of knowing I’ve finally trapped the one I missed.

I take down the barricade.  I triumphantly hand the box with the kittens to the neighborhood caretaker.  I set the tabby locked safely inside the carrier outside the shed.  I tell the caretaker to call Carla on the cell phone and start bragging about how I caught the last breeding feral mother and three kittens at Satsuma with nothing but a carrier and gloves.

As I take a last triumphant look around this shed, this safe haven for this feral mother and her babies, a flash of light catches my eye.

I bend down and am face to face with the perfect skeleton of a tiny kitten, lying on its back, all resistance gone.  Its tiny face, its teeth, its stolen beauty, its death.

I am shattered.  And I am humbled.

I say a silent prayer, a plea for forgiveness, to this little one, the one that I missed.