How the pest cat was caught 2/9/2018
We
keep cats outside the house to keep away or kill rats. Two cats are female and one young cat about
six or seven months old is male which took us four to five hours to catch it
and threw it away for good. It has killed
twenty-two chicks which we kept in a chick coop on stilts.
It
pulled the chicks down from below the coop.
The wire mesh of chick coop that I fixed at the bottom about ten years
or more ago has somehow become rusty and rotten. The pest cat knew all the trick to get the
chicks there. It only started this bad
habit in August this year. This is the
first time that it picked on my chicks.
On the 18th August, I bought twenty-one chicks home, knowing
that some would collapse. On the second
day, my husband found a few chicks missing and one or two without parts of the
body remained. Many chicks were wounded
in different ways. We lost about
thirteen chicks in the count.
We
were not sure what the culprit was. But
it did not take us long to catch the culprit red-handed. It was our young male cat and we saw it in the
act. To remedy the situation, my husband
fenced up and blocked every possible entry of the pest cat into the underneath
of the chick coop.
On
the 25th of August, I bought another fifteen chicken home to add in
for the loss. A day or two later, it
acted again, killed five and ate part of each. We lost six chicks. We had no idea how to catch it and get rid of
it. We are no match to the cat in speed
and agility. We were helplessly angry.
I suggested to catch it. But he did not think it viable. We felt defeated before we tried.
On
the 1st September, yesterday, I bought six chickens to add in for
the loss. Yesterday afternoon, I heard
chicks “chik…..” in alarm calling for help from outside the kitchen. We were having lunch. Immediately, I jumped up from my seat to
check. I saw it mouthing the chick. It had again pulled the whole chick down from
the bottom mesh of the chick coop.
Seeing me, it abandoned the dead chick
in fright.
I was furious
this time. Straight away, I boiled water
and intended to scald it to wound or kill it.
I did not care much anymore. I
was determined to get rid of this pest cat for good. When it came back, I really chased it to
scald it but the hot water could only reach it a bit less than 10%. After trying a few times, I gave up.
My husband,
being a cooler and calmer person, thought otherwise. He set the trap. We had a cage which my son bought to keep a
wounded bird. We made good use of it
then. We put the chick that was killed
by the pest cat in the cage which we placed outside the window. We tied one end of the plastic thread to the
door of the cage, which we kept wide open and we had the other end of the thread
through the window. We were waiting in
turn patiently inside the house.
The pest cat came
near the cage tried to get the chick from opposite side of the cage because it
had not discovered the door yet. I was
too anxious to scald to would or kill it.
I rushed out with a mug of hot water.
I scalded it a bit and fleed. This
time, it took even longer time for it to come back to the cage. I
decided to co-operate with my husband to catch it using the cage trap.
At about 6 o’
clock or so, it came back and found the door of the cage and entered. My husband’s turn to wait for it and caught
it in cage by pulling close the door and I sped out of the house to bolt the
door and secured it with a wire. To
prevent the bite of the furious cat which lost the freedom, I used a piece of
wire to make the handle so that I could carry the cage without the fear of
being bitten.
Yes, the cat
was too scared to eat the bait right inside the cage. We squeezed the cage in the booth of the car
and brought it about one or two miles away.
We released it to the wild.
Once we set
our minds to do something, I mind you we are not far from success. We caught the pest cat successfully once and
for all.
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