Kaboodle

The news on Kaboodle the Fox cat has not been good. I could not catch her. And don’t think I did not try. I had cleared an area in the garage for her and set up the space heater. I had gone online and ordered a special sort of heating pad and it had arrived just in time. I had cans of tuna and batches of potent catnip. I spent nine hours lying in wait like Wile E. Coyote waiting for Roadrunner, and like Roadrunner, she got away.

It wasn’t that she didn’t go into the dog crate that I was using as a trap. She did. But Goodness went in there with her, or another kitten was blocking the door so I couldn’t close it.

Kaboodle was hungry and immensely interested in the whole production. She spent a lot of that day lying down in front of the crate door, and even stuck her head in the kitchen as if to ask me what I was up to.

All day long it was like trying to catch a small wild bird.

Then as darkness fell I was about to give up hope. Then, she went in!

I closed the door but before I could get it latched she smashed against it. I leaned down to say “it’s ok” and try to latch it and she smashed out. My angle was awkward and she was a bolt of pure feline lightning. Am I really that weak? She is her mother’s daughter. They look alike and they both lunge and throw themselves at a door when it is closed. The other two kittens I was able to catch as their instinct was to cower, not to charge.

So now she is 2 or 3 weeks pregnant and no one wants to spay her. I have been looking for a foster home for a pregnant cat. No one can take her. Her gestation would last another four or five weeks and then the kittens would need to be nursed for two months.

This madness has got to end. We need our lives back.

I feel that if we could solve the problem of the feral kittens, we could solve all our problems.

If we were Egyptian royalty with vast granaries we would give thanks. We would be rich with cats. Shaka Zulu, the mother of all these kittens, makes beautiful, healthy, smart, bright, sweet, interesting kittens who are good hunters.

But I cannot solve this problem of cat overpopulation, hard as I try, so what am I to do?

Is the only answer to introduce coyotes?