Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates over the last week but we are utterly swamped here at the harbour - no room to squeeze in a sausage let along a cat / kitten!!!
Our feeder hasn't been back last weekend but the temperatures were below freezing and they do tend to only appear when the weather is warmer. Time will tell if they appear tonight!
We have made some progress however on an information front which is great news!! Paul was down yesterday afternoon and managed to get access to the actual yard where the cats are living and into one of the storage sheds that they have been accessing through a hole in the wall. This however looks to be purely their play area as there are lots of units and stuff for them to climb all over and footprints everywhere. We did wonder if mum had had her kittens in there but after extensive search by Paul it turned up a blank.
After speaking to some of the boys and office staff on the site and also to a fisherman he managed to collar at the harbour yesterday it would appear that there are mixed views on the cats but thankfully after explaining what we are trying to achieve and why the cats need to stay at the site all were in agreement with our plan - great news!
Fisherman was probably the most helpful and has told us that the colony took residence at this particular site around 5 years ago. He says they have done a great service at keeping the mink, rats and mice away and he has one of them himself at home that he found as a kitten.
He has confirmed (as we suspected) that the main nest site is under one of the large wooden huts on the harbour not far from our feeding station and often he will see the kittens running about underneath it - this being where we caught Kali & Baby.
He has now agreed to work with us and give us information if he spots any kittens in the area of the shed whilst coming and going - especially as he found out that we'd chased off yobs from trying to untie one of his boats a few weeks back!
One VERY good and useful piece of news was that he was able to tell us who the fair weather feeders are - and believe it or not we have been there at the same time. Apparently an old couple stop by the harbour on a Sat / Sun and have their dinner watching out over the harbour and put out food for the cats. Frustratingly enough they watched us check the feeding station and pull our hair out one night - so needless to say if we see them there again we know whos window to tap
What was interesting was that we asked him how many cats he though were there and he said 4 or 5
was rather shocked when he found out that we had sighted at least 12 different cats and lifted 3 kittens.
he did say that Sammy Sr that we caught couple of weeks back is uber friendly and quite popular around the harbour bless him - and we also told him how to spot the ones we had done and returned.
Our current plan is to trap next weekend providing vets can accommodate the monday morning and get as many as we can in and done and returned to the harbour to live out the rest of their lives. We reckon mum is going to be a difficult catch as she's a sly ol girl - but we will do our best.
Think that just above sums everything up lol so much has happened over the last week I'm losing track of myself let alone anything else.
Liz - if you're reading this - any word on those vouchers??