Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

One year ago today, we woke up early with a plan to take the female cat we had trapped to the TNR clinic for 7:30 AM. We dubbed her Mamma Mia because we knew she had a litter. We had been unsuccessful in trapping her companion female whom we assume was a kitten from a previous litter. We called her ‘Little Precious’ because of her resemblance to our housecat Precious. I tried for hours to get her, but she was probably terrified by Mamma’s disappearance and kept her distance.

I ran outside in the early morning to see if any of the cats were around before I carried Mamma in her trap to the car parked behind the house. That’s when I saw LP/Maylee lurking around. I decided to give it one more shot, grabbed some sardines and through them into the trap, then went inside. It wasn’t two minutes later that I heard the spring release – I had her.

Man was she pissed. But mostly scared.

They were both spayed, vaccinated, ears tipped, etc. Mamma Mia had to be released back to her kittens that night, but the newly christened Maylee was released into our second bedroom where she took refuge under a chair and prepared her kill list.  We learned they were very young and weighed about 5 lbs which is horribly light.

By mid July we had retrapped Mamma and reunited her with Maylee.

And the adventure began …

We had an unexpected delay in the process when the ceiling in their bedroom collapsed one night and Mamma Mia ended up in our bathroom while Maylee lived under the sofa and in the attic for three months. When the room was sorted out, we used our mad cat wrangling skills to chase them back into the bedroom where they both promptly hid. Who can blame them?

They are still confined to that second bedroom where they play hard, sleep hard, and make slow & steady progress to becoming tamed. They have put on a lot of weight and muscle. They chase the red dot. Maylee will tentatively touch Laura’s shoe and both of them sit out and engage us when we go into the room. The nanny cam gives us a glimpse into their downtime.

They eat. A lot. They’ve gotten to the stage of turning up their noses at some flavors of canned food instead of inhaling everything in sight. They are interested in the cats in the rest of the house.

I’m looking forward to being able to groom them and let them experience the pleasure of being petted. For now, we have shoes being touched.

We are working to give back to the folks who helped with Maylee and Mamma Mia by coordinating a #CatFoodDrivePgh – please consider a donation of cat food to support the Homeless Cat Management Team.