4 years ago

Facebook has this nice feature that reminds me of what happened on "this day" in years past... today's reminder was of kitties on Kauai in 2013 at Makai Club Cottages. On Facebook at the time, I called them our "Local Herd":

"Angel" and "Max"

"Angel"

"Ginger" and "Max"

"Ginger"

View from our Lanai

Another view from our lanai (a little more to the left/west)

Sweetie Pie (note that her right ear is tipped, indicating that she has been spayed)

Sweetie Pie eating

I had noticed that Ginger and Angel did not have their ears tipped... now, it is possible that a cat could be spayed or neutered and re-released without having the ear tipped (Miss Kitty was an example of that), but almost all of this colony had their ears tipped, so I was suspicious. I contacted a local feral group... and after I had posted the pictures earlier in the day, I posted again on Facebook that evening:

Amazingly, Kauai Ferals brought me two traps a couple of hours ago, and they now house Ginger and Angel. They will be checked by a vet, spayed and returned here in a couple of days. Ginger and Angel were the only non-tipped (un-neutered) that were part of the local "herd" that we had seen (though two additional un-tipped have shown up this afternoon). First time I have ever tried helping out in management of a colony!

Afterwards, both Angel and Ginger seemed to hold no grudges against us - returning to visit on the lanai:

Angel lounging on the lanai railing.

Angel, 5 days post-op

Ginger - back on the lanai for munchies 1 week post-op

Angel eating in the trap in which she was caught last week, and Charlie wishing he could access the food!

As you can see, we kept a trap on the lanai, as there was other cats that we had not yet trapped. We had a water bottle under the door and a string pulled across the lanai into the sliding glass door so I could see if the cat we wanted was in the trap, and if he was, pull the bottle and catch him. (I typed "a string" - it was actually dental floss that Dwayne had contributed to the effort!)

One of the cats we wanted to trap:

We called him "SC" for Scaredy Cat - he was VERY cautious, and the one time I saw him in the trap, escaped just as the door was closing on him, which made him even more cautious.

We never caught SC, but... one night I saw that a cat was in the trap, but it was dark and I couldn't tell which one. None of our "regulars" was on the lanai, so I decided to pull the string and catch whoever it was, knowing that we could release the cat if it was already tipped. It turned out that the cat I trapped was a large alpha male cat - whenever we would hear cat fights in the complex, if I looked out and could see combatants, this large alpha male was almost certain to be part of the mix. He was NOT happy to be in the trap. The feral group had a cover that we put over the trap, but reaching for the handle was dicey as he was slashing with his claws anything he could. We drove down to Kilauea and delivered the cat in the trap to one of the feral group folks - we didn't want to keep him overnight. When we picked him up a couple of days later from another of the feral group folks (at the Safeway in Kapa'a), she confirmed that he was one tough cat! He had slashed at her when she was attempting to replace the pee pad in his trap one day post surgery. When we returned with him to our complex, we took him to a wooded area away from the cottages, turned the door of the trap away from us, and pulled up the door with a long stick. He bounded from the trap like he was rocket propelled and was gone in the woods. We did not see him again, and it seemed that the colony was a bit more peaceful (no cat fights that we noticed for the remainder of our stay).

Some additional history - I found some additional pictures from October 2, 2012:

I had included this comment: Anybody want us to bring you a kitty from Kaua'i? These are on our lanai... there are two others under the front steps.

I am pretty sure the calico is the same as the one I called "Sweetie Pie" the following year (pictures further above). I don't think that the orange tabby kitten is the same as "Max" - I think Max may have been a previous generation.

We got rid of all of our timeshare weeks at the same time that we were clearing things out of the house in 2014, so we have not been back since 2013... I do sometimes wonder how the kitties at Makai Club Cottages are doing, and we remember fondly our times on Kauai over the years - from our honeymoon in 1989 every other year in odd years through 2013, with a couple of even year visits thrown in too.