Preparations!

So, tonight's the night. (Great, now I have the song 'Tonight's the Night' stuck in my head. Oh well, at least it's Gershwin). I woke up to a text message from my dad that said, "Shh! Be vewy vewy quiet, we're huntin'' cats." Hee.

Plans are in place: (AzCATs volunteer will be here around 6pm, some friends are joining me ... at some point.)

Supplies have been bought: (I really, really expected someone (anyone!) to ask why I was buying 10 cans of tuna fish in oil. It's not like they got shuffled up with other groceries-- I only bought catfood (for the indoor kitties), a notebook (for keeping track of anybody we catch tonight), paper plates (for the putting on of tuna), and ten cans of tuna in oil. Turns out that the store I went to, at least, only sells one brand of tuna in oil, even though they have approximately eleventy-hundred other kinds. I also bought a bunch of plastic sheeting (for carpets, protection of, and car seats/trunk, protection of, from scared cats, bladders full) and shop towels (my dad's suggestion. He's a smart cookie) for cleaning of same.

I also spoke with one of the wonderful office people. I asked if she or anyone around knew where the drainage tunnels run (because I know that the cats are often *in* said tunnels.) She didn't, and maintenance can only be called on Sundays for emergencies, but we did the next best thing: we hopped in a golf car (yaaay! Free ride!) and drove around to all of the tunnels and green areas (where the tunnels tend to be.) This was very helpful-- I learned that most of the tunnel openings would not allow a feline to pass through (they're filled with rocks. Um, the tunnels, I mean, not the cats) and now I know where they are. This is good.

I also finally learned what the complaints that the office had heard about the cats were: smell, and noise. Fortunately, both of those issues will be mainly taken care of when we successfully TNR. (Cat fights are mostly mating behavior, and the urine smell was most likely male cats marking their territory.)

I'll at least briefly update tonight yet with how it went (if we caught anyone at all, and who, etc.) with, most likely, a more complete update tomorrow.

Supplies: 10 cans of tuna, tin foil for covering open tuna, paper plates for placing tuna, plastic utensils for dishing tuna, can opener for opening tuna. Shop towels for cleaning messes (tuna and other), plastic sheeting (for prevention of messes, generally non-tuna.) Covers for the traps, and newspapers for inside. There are enough (in this picture) of either of those last because the AzCATs volunteer is bringing more (as well as the traps.)

(Heh, you can also see a bunch of romance novels in the background. That's the "summer reading bundle" prize for the raffle!)