A man walked along the beach, throwing starfish into the ocean.
He was asked, why do this? There are so many and you'll never be able to save them all. You can't possibly make a difference!
In response, the man picked up another starfish and threw it into water. "I made a difference to that one".
— Adapted from “The Star Thrower” by Loren Eiseley
About one month after I’d lost my cat, Tallis, I was walking home when I saw the small frozen body of a tortoiseshell kitten in a parking lot. It was a pretty awful moment. Only a few blocks away was my home, desperately missing a tortoiseshell cat, and here was a tiny tortoiseshell cat who had died desperately missing a home. I just had not seen her fast enough.
And I wanted to stop this ever happening again.
Admittedly, saving every single stray cat in the world would be a slightly tough challenge. But this is one of those situations where you can make a surprisingly big difference with a very simple act: you can TNR the neighbourhood stray cats.
Trapping a cat. This mog we named “Saburo” meaning “third son”, as he was the third ginger cat I’d trapped.
TNR stands for “Trap, Neuter, Return”, which actually sums up the entire process. You catch a stray or feral cat, take them to the vet to have them neutered (boy) or spayed (girl) and then return them to their usual neighbourhood. This stops the birth of street kittens, most of whom are unlikely to live, and greatly improves the health of the adult cat. Neutered cats are less likely to fight for territory or roam, and become less noticeable (both in numbers and noise) in the neighbourhood where not everyone may be disposed to treat cats with kindness.
To give an idea of the difference made by TNR, a mother cat can produce over 50 kittens (including multiple generations of grand-kittens) in just one year. Numbers for a seven year lifespan are up to 450,000 kittens[*]. In truth, that figure is exaggerated as many of those kittens will die and even seven years is a generous estimate for the lifetime of a street cat. However, it is clear that to even TNR one cat makes an impact.
There was just one problem: I hadn’t got the faintest idea what I was doing.
However, my resolve was stiffened by an amorous furry pair who chose to make sweet, sweet love outside my balcony. It was not a sight fit for small children. Moreover, it was the middle of December and the resulting kittens would not have stood much of a chance. I reached out to the Japan Cat Network community and asked for help. Since a stray cat will rarely be friendly enough to be handled, a humane trap is needed to catch their furry backside so they can be carted off to the vet for a bit of ball-snipping. Sometimes you can borrow these from a vet clinic with a TNR program. I was able to borrow my first few traps from friends.
The following year was to give me a 101 in cat traps. And some are better than others. The basic principal is the same for the most common type. They are a long rectangular cage with a pressure plate near the far end. You place food (preferably a delectably smelly morsel) at the back of the cage. The cat walks in, steps on the pressure plate which triggers the door to close. The best traps have a trigger that involves a precarious balancing mechanism to keep the door open, making this extremely sensitive to the most light paw’d investigator. The two types with which I’ve had the most success are ones where the door slides vertically upwards and is held by a thin rod that slides through a hole in the door, and ones where the door swings outwards and held in position by pressure from a horizontal rod. When the plate inside the trap it pressed down by the weight of the investigating cat, the rod slides inwards in both cases, releasing the door (see images below for these two types).
A third type of trap uses a hook to hold the door open. I found this mechanism needs a reasonable force on the pressure plate to release the hook, allowing sneaky light toed moggies to brazenly walk inside, quaff down the food, and saunter on their way.
Yes, I am speaking from experience.
SO MUCH EXPERIENCE.
The female cat of the two lovers mentioned above pulled this stunt about 826 times before I gave up and borrowed a different trap type.
As a stray cat will usually not trust people, you cannot wait too close to the trap. On the other hand, you also can’t leave the trap unattended, as you wouldn’t want the cat to freeze if you left the trap overnight, or the trap to be tampered with by a passerby. I have usually waited to see the cat I want to trap, put down some food (I now always carry cat biscuits in my pocket!) to keep it in the area, and then returned home to grab the trap and wait at a short distance. Dropping a towel or coat over the trap once the cat is inside can help to stop the freshly contained moggie from panicking and causing an injury.
(Below: the starfish TNR’d kitties. If you’re wondering about the light toed mog, it was Juliet. I named her for her amorous relations in the vicinity of balconies.)
At this point, transport to the vet clinic is required. When I could not do it the same day, I kept the cat in my apartment overnight, using either my bathroom (Japanese bathrooms have a wet floor which is easily washed) or a large dog cage that a friend gave me.
It is safe to say your new friend will not be impressed by your good intentions. In fact, they will definitely not consider themselves to be your friend.
Some people leave the cat in the trap. This is easiest if you’re able to get to the vet quite soon and the vet is close, or you have a car. The vet I use is quite a distance from my apartment and the trap is cumbersome, so I’ve usually transfered the cat to a regular carrier.
This can be every bit as bad as it sounds.
So far when I’ve attempted this feat, I’ve taken the trap with cat into my wet-floor bathroom and shut the door. FIRMLY shut the door. Then I’ve placed the carrier by the trap entrance and hoped that the cat dives straight for this dark space.
This sometimes worked.
And sometimes… it did not.
So long, suckers! Juliet is returned after TNR.
The latter case involved a frantic cat bouncing off the walls of the bathroom in a frenzy, before finally taking a wrong twist and ending up in the carrier I was waving around. Picture netball in hell where the ball is possessed. And has claws.
While all vets can spay and neuter a cat, not all clinics will have a TNR program. The difference is expense and in Japan, that can be a vast difference. We potentially could be talking about 50,000 yen (500 hundred dollars) for neutering a pet, versus about 5,000 yen (about 50 dollars) for a TNR. A further discount can often be acquired through coupons offered by the local government ward office. The TNR program in Japan is not as well developed as elsewhere, where the cost may even be free.
I take my TNR cats to the Meiwa Dobutsu Aigo Clinic. They are truly fabulous. The vet is very gentle with all the cats and tucks them up in towels to prevent murder floof actions. The vet assistant has cuddled all the cats I’ve brought them, including the more street-worn cases I’ve found. It’s the same clinic I brought Cassie to when she was unwell. The team there clearly have a vocation for helping community moggies. The only disadvantage is that they do not speak English at the clinic, so I have to haul along a friend each time I go (thank you, Selena!).
For the boys, neutering is a small procedure and the cat can be collected and returned outside the following day. For girls, it’s a bit of a bigger operation, and I have always asked the clinic to keep the cat for two or three days to give a chance for everything to heal. I have also paid for a few extras, such as vaccination and parasite treatment. The vet clips the ear, something known as a “sakura clip” in Japan, to denote the cat has been TNR’d. This stops them going through the unnecessary hell of being trapped twice. After this, I brought each of them back to their home ground.
Cats are territorial, so it is important to release the cat back into the area where they are established. This will hopefully allow them to thrive, and a stable neutered local population will stop the appearance of more dead kittens. A very young cat (less than… maybe four months… ish?) should be fairly easy to socialise, so potentially could be re-homed. However, the cats I’ve TNR’d so far have all been about a year or so old. It is normally difficult to domesticate a cat of that age… although the cat I called Norah would later prove to be an exception to that rule!
This year, we’ve TNR’d seven cats. Many of those I’ve seen again, and (after a sulk) they come to my balcony for food. Others I’ve seen for a short while and then they’ve disappeared. It may be they’ve moved to a new territory (especially if I trapped them while there was a cat in heat, and they may have wandered further from their home beat) or it may be a sadder fate. But whatever happens, I do know that I’ve given them all a better shot out there.
Selena and I talk about TNR to Japan Seeking Sustainability vlogger, JJ Walsh (it’s the Hollywood adaption of the blog post!)
[*] If anyone is confused by that calculation, remember that the number of generations that have kittens keeps increasing, so it’s not just 50 x 7.