A Little Bathtub Gin

Periodically new cats show up outside my house. Most of the time they're owned and taken care of (which, in my definition, includes feeding, vaccinating, and spaying/neutering as a bare minimum) but they like to hang out in my yard. But every once in a while, new cats show up that aren't being taken care of.

So... yeah, I saw a kitten last week that looked old enough to manage on its own even though I saw it nurse a bit. I had thought the mother cat was fixed because the people at the end of the street have been feeding her, but apparently not.

Out came the trap. First I trapped a larger orange cat. There's a 75% chance that an orange cat is male, and he didn't look pregnant, so I let him go.

Next I caught the mama cat, who is probably not more than six months old. I thought she wasn't really feral because she hangs out five feet away from me when I'm gardening, so I dumped her in my (empty) bathtub to wait for her spay appointment.

 (Before she trashed the tub)

That assumption about her not being feral might not have been a good one.

Her new name is Bathtub Gin (or Ginnie, for short) and I have until Monday morning to figure out how I'm going to get her into a carrier for the ride to the vet.

 (Yep, she's super happy about this whole situation.)

Then I set the trap out to catch her kitten. I got the larger orange cat again. I let him out in the morning, then set the trap up again in the evening. Come morning I found the damn orange cat again. He was clearly irritated that it took me so long to let him out. Next day, same result, although this time the little kitten (whose name obviously needs to be Tonic, right?) was hanging out nearby and ran off when I approached to let the big idiot out of the trap.

Anyhow, I'm not really sure what I did wrong in my life, but I'm 50 years old and have a bathtub full of Gin...