Congratulations to Kimberlie Hamilton who won a free outdoor shelter for their colony cats and a bottle of Feral Flower Essence from FixNation board member Jackson Galaxy’s Spirit Essences line through FixNation’s National Feral Cat Day story competition!
I had only a vague idea of what TNR (trap-neuter-return) was until early last year, when a black feral cat named Billie gave birth to kittens in my neighbor Heather’s back garden. We were determined to get the mom cat and her two surviving kittens, Tabitha and Nigel, spayed and neutered as soon as they were old enough.
I attended the FixNation training session, brought home two traps, and Heather and I followed the detailed instructions to the letter. We hid in the dark inside my cottage, peering out the window and waiting for Billie and her babes to approach the trap. Our best-case scenario was that mom would go in one trap and the kittens in the other—and within five minutes of setting out the traps that’s exactly what happened. We were so incredulous and excited that we were literally jumping up and down. Taking the cats in to the clinic, getting them fixed, bringing them home…it all went off without a hitch.
Later, Heather managed to trap another black feral cat, an elusive and rather sickly looking male we named Grumpy. In the end, he tested positive for feline HIV and had to be euthanized, and we both felt really bad about that. However, this sad turn has a happy ending—I was inspired enough by FixNation’s mission to start doing some pro bono marketing work on their behalf, and Heather is now a FixNation volunteer who puts in time at the clinic whenever she can and assists with special events. In fact, Heather has been so inspired by FixNation’s mission that she’s gone back to school to become a vet tech, and hopes one day to provide expert care to the homeless kitties who eventually find themselves at the FixNation clinic.
Billie, Tabitha and Nigel continue to live in my back garden and Heather’s too…we have “shared custody” of the partially tame critters.
