Caught an animal in the trap

We have lost three meat chickens and three laying hens to a predator.  I posted about it the other day and showed how the animal kills his prey - our chickens.  It is very frustrating (and costly) to wake up in the morning and find dead birds that you've worked so hard to raise.  I have been setting out cage traps baited with a can of salmon.  I think it is a raccoon that is giving me the problems and I want to catch the coon and eliminate my problem.

After a week of setting the traps, I had come up empty.  One day the critter triggered the trap by shaking it, I assume, but he must be very smart and leery of entering the trap.  So imagine my excitement this morning at 5:30 when I walked out with a lantern and saw eyes glowing in the darkness from within one of the traps.  As I got closer, I could tell that it was a cat, so my excitement of getting rid of the predator was dampened.  The trap was in the shade, so I figured I'd just take the cat "for a ride" down the road a ways when I got back from work and let the cat loose where it would never come back around our house again.

When I got home I went to get the cat.  The trap has a handle on top and when I started carrying the trap, the cat started going crazy in the cage, hissing and making a big commotion.  It was a big cat, too, that looked like a panther.  If he could have figured out how to get out of there, he would have scratched me to ribbons.  He wasn't hurt, but he didn't want to be in the cage another minute.  I brought the trap with the cat in it and set it down next to Russ' truck and was going inside to get the keys.

The cat in the hat... er, The cat in the trap!

So that's when Russ says, "Dad, I think that's the neighbor's cat."  Uh -oh.  And I'm about to take the cat on an all expenses paid vacation far away.  So I tell Tricia and Russ, "Well, I guess the right thing to do is to go call the neighbor."

The conversation went like this:

Kyle: "Mrs. J, this is Kyle"
Mrs. J: (She's from Scotland, so this is with a Scottish accent) "Oh hi, Kyle"
Kyle: "Mrs. J, do you have a cat?"
Mrs. J: "Oh yes dearie, I've got five of them.  Why?"
Kyle: (inaudibly groans)  "What color are they?"
Mrs. J: "Well, one's black, and..."
Kyle: "I think I have your cat, Mrs. J.  He's okay, but we've been losing chickens and I set up some traps and caught your cat last night."
Mrs. J: "Last night?  I can't recall seeing 'Scotty' today, now that I think of it."
Kyle: "Well Scotty's with me and I'll be sending him home soon."
Mrs. J: "Thank you, Kyle."
 

One angry black cat (Beam me up, Scotty!)

So I very carefully opened the cage and Scotty leaped out and ran toward the neighbor's house, glancing back at me menacingly as if to say, "I'll have my revenge, buddy."   I'm so glad Russ mentioned it when he did.  I was minutes away from taking old Scotty on a one way trip and it would have been an awkward situation when the neighbor would've come to the door and asked us if we'd seen a black cat and I would've had to tell her the truth...  We bring milk over to Mrs. J from time to time and she, in turn, brings hot, fresh baked banana bread and homemade shortbread cookies over to the house.  Those goodies would have come to a screeching halt had I abducted her cat, Scotty.

All worked out well in the end.  We stayed on good terms with the neighbors and Scotty got a new lease on life, freed from jail and able to do what cats do best.  (What do cats do best?)