T - for Trapping

Our team of volunteers who trapped all jobs on the West of the island have been and gone. Tracey and Sue, who volunteered in February, came back to help again (thank you, thank you, thank you!)...they also dragged Nikki along (a veterinary nurse) and Debs who has been helping cats on Ibiza long before Angela started care4cats. To complete the team we had 2 more new volunteers: Sasha and Lorraine who run the Cats Protection in Glasgow. A better group of trappers you couldn't have asked for: organised, passionate and dedicated to catching every last cat!
Phone calls started to be made to schedule the weeks jobs. Some had already been set up for Sunday enabling the new volunteers to work alongside the old hands and get used to the paperwork, traps and locations.
Toni, our vet for the week at Clinica Kans in Puig d'en Vals, helped us get a head start by kindly opening up on Sunday evening to take in the cats trapped that day.

So - the sun was shining, the cats were hungry and the trapping began! 2 of the teams worked together for the first few days doing the larger numbers whilst Sasha and Lorraine did the smaller jobs plus working alongside Vera in Club Cala Vadella who was helping to trap a very large colony there.

Early mornings and late nights were the order of the day for everyone.
All was going according to plan until Sue, Nikki, Tracey and Debs headed off to a call from a lady called Evalina. She'd originally phoned asking for help re-homing as she felt she couldn't cope with the large number of feral cats now in her garden from when she'd started to feed a few ferals alongside her own 3 cats. I explained C4Cs couldn't do that but would neuter them so the group didn't expand. She felt relieved and explained there were about 20-30 cats. Being used to people over-exagerating I conservedly thought it might be about 25. However when I finally walked up the dirt track to her tiny house I was amazed at the numbers of cats that shot out from every concievable bush! A call went out to the other team to come quickly so that all traps and cages available could be used. Evalina had done what had been asked and not fed them, so they were ravenous...and thankfully easier to catch. We think Sue now holds the record for the number of cats caught by a dropper in one go...3!
Most were feral but one little snow white kitten was clearly her favourite, she had been dropped at her front door by the mother cat and so Evalina had hand fed her. She was such a sweetie.
In total the number trapped there was 41 cats. When I rang Toni to let him know we were bringing in a large number of cats I had to repeat the number 3 times! He thought I said 13 not 30! The girls caught the rest the following morning before the others were released - so a job well done. We left Evalina with all the food we had as it was clear she couldn't afford to feed them...though the piece of land she lived on in her small wooden house was idyllic and totally safe for all the cats once released.

In the end there was only 1 female cat not trapped, as she was spotted as the team was driving away, and some kittens that were too young. When the charity visits in February then of course we will make sure they are all trapped and neutered. Then Evalina can relax in the knowledge that no more kittens will be born. I can't tell you the relief she felt knowing that the Care4cats voluteers were there to help her out of the nightmare she'd found herself in.

Anyone who has worked in a trapping team will know it's all about deadlines and logistics; getting appointments made in advance then making sure you have enough cages for the jobs you're doing. Many jobs on the list were small numbers of cats. Trapping 3 jobs of 3/4 each is more time-consuming than one colony of 20. Even on the Saturday, before leaving for their flight, they had 35 cats to release. This just shows the dedication of our volunteer trappers - they work up to the last possible minute. To the amazement of all during the week our fab teams managed to trap over 160 cats from all the jobs phoned in.
Naturally there were one or two cats that failed to be trapped, always frustrating, but they will be the first on the list for the next visit. The positive thing is that several colonies are now completely neutered thanks to the charities volunteers.

Stay tuned for more stories from the trapping expeditions...because as I type the 2nd Team is now out and working all the jobs on the East side of the island. The hard work goes on!

PHOTOS: 1 - trapping volunteers before the work starts! 2 - Nikki with Snowball  3 - cats being released