MONCTON — We’ve heard of bounty hunters and even crocodile hunters, but New Brunswick has its very own cat hunter.
Every week, April Barnes hauls out her traps and sets out on the hunt for stray cats in the community.
“Sometimes we just have to step in and help. I mean they deserve it too right.”
As a volunteer for Cat Rescue Maritimes, a trap, neuter, release program, Barne traps cats to have them fixed and returned to their home to help control the stray population in the province.
Marlah Hoganson of CARMA says Barnes’ work is invaluable.
“Our objective is to cut back on the unwanted population of cats in a humane way. We don’t believe in euthanasia,” says Hoganson. “What we do is we go out and trap there feral cats and we have then neutered and spayed.”
Barnes has lost count just how many cats she’s trapped over her past four years as a volunteer. But as a whole, CARMA traps about 2000 stray cats a year. That may sound like a lot, but Hoganson says it’s the tip of the iceberg.
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“In areas where we are not there like the Miramichi, Bouctouche and Richibuctou it’s really bad. You’ll start off with two cats and in five years you’ll have like 100 running around. And they are a nuisance and with that many cats you get disease and the cats die a horrible death. ”
Enter Barnes, the cat hunter. But actually catching a feral cat takes some talent. Wild cats are not your run of the mill house cats, Barnes says. They’re street smart.
“They know what we are up to most of the time. We have a trap. We contact the land owner the night before so that they don’t feed so we know they are going to be hungry and are going to want what we have.”
What they have on the plate is tuna and anchovies, the stinkier the better. One has to have good bait to snag a cleaver cat. Barnes and her partner Dee carefully place the drop trap just right. They run a long line to get out of the way and wait for the cats to appear. Barnes says patience is a virtue in cat-trapping.
“Sometimes we’ll sit an hour. Sometimes we’ll sit for four hours. We’ll do our best to wait it out until it gets dark.”
Spotting a stray is easy. Actually coaxing it into the cage is another story because cats do things at their own speed.
“I have seen myself sit for hours with one cat, you know, sticking his paw in and eating it, but it won’t go near that door.”
Her patience usually pays off in the end. But she says trapping often feels like a scene out of Loonie Tunes.
“Sometimes you just sit there and are like ‘you wascally cat just get in there!’ ha ha.”
Hoganson says spay and neutering stays and returning them to their colonies cuts down drastically on the stray cat population and also improves the quality of life for the colony.
“The mother cat is not having kittens all the time and the males are not fighting each other all the time.”
Hoganson says CARMA also traps kittens, spays and neuters the animals and then puts them up for adoption. CARMA has offices in Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John and Sussex.
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