THE FRESNO TEN (TNR Trapper in Training)

Two pregnant mothers. Eight juveniles. One food guy who started doing math.

My name is Mac-n-Cheese, commonly referred to as Mac. I’m a girl, despite the name. That's me in the collage, last row, in the middle. Apparently, I'm the ringleader of an organization locals have come to call The Fresno Ten.

Ringleader? Whatever. I prefer management.

There were ten of us when this whole mess started: the elders, Chicken and Mama, plus the latest eight of their offspring, Cali, Mustache, Grey, Nibbles, Spud, Socks, C.S., and me. We lived in this two-house-wide world we called ours. We showed up for meals, maintained a rodent-free residence, and generally kept to ourselves.

No one knows how we got here in the first place, but it’s home.

Then Chicken got pregnant again. And Mama got pregnant again.

That’s when our food guy, Jeff, started doing math.

Why, Jeff? Where’s the food?

Until then, our arrangement had been nearly perfect. We showed up hungry. Jeff put out food. We ate. He went back inside. Nobody asked questions about population growth, reproductive habits, or why the same two mothers kept making bad decisions.

Now, with eight juveniles standing in front of him and two pregnant mothers, he suddenly realized that ten cats were about to become considerably more than ten.

At the time, Jeff had never trapped a cat in his life. His philosophy was simple: none of us asked to be born, so he was going to feed us to make our lives as good as possible.

We preferred him that way.

Somehow, he found Fresno TNR on Facebook. We hear he spends a lot of time on social media, whatever that is.

All of a sudden, he experienced a “WTH?” moment. I don’t know what that means, but it changed EVERYTHING. I’m told humans do that when they realize a solution was within their reach all along, but they were too clueless to notice.

This would prove to be a life-changing development for us and, in the end, for Jeff, too.

Until that point, Jeff knew absolutely nothing about trapping cats. He had never set a trap, never transported a community cat for surgery, never dealt with recovery, and had no reason to care whether anybody’s ear was tipped. His entire community cat management strategy consisted of opening a food source and placing it on the ground.

He made the best Chicken. We considered him highly qualified.

It started on a normal weekend. Jeff was inside staring at his computer. By five o’clock Sunday, he was on his way to Tractor Supply. That night, he became a Fresno TNR, Trapper in Training, and began learning how to trap-train.

The next day, this metal box appeared. Then this bottle thing connected to a string, then smelly but delicious food. Words were being thrown around like “spay,” “neuter,” “return,” and “recovery.” There was also an unusually large amount of discussion about ears.

This went on for what seemed like years. Hey, I’m a cat. I have no concept of time.

I had concerns. Dinner had always been served in an open setting with excellent visibility and several convenient exits. Now Jeff wanted us to eat inside something with a handle.

We had to walk into the thing, eat, and then back out. What was wrong with the old system? Nobody had complained about the plate. Also, only one of us could fit at a time.

Or so I thought.

Then one day, Spud was in the thing when the bottle was yanked away and the door slammed shut with a horrendous noise.

Oh no! Spud!

He went nuts. A few moments later, Jeff showed up with a blanket, covered the whole thing, and carried it away.

Our plate of food was back. The metal box was gone. Things were normal again, except we were short one Spud.

Then, a year or so later, Spud came back. What? Remember, I’m a cat.

Everybody crowded around, peppering him with questions. Where had he been? What had happened? Was there food?

He was no help.

Then somebody noticed his ear.

“Spud! What happened to your ear?”

“What are you talking about?”

This was going nowhere. You can’t ask someone to look at his own ear, and Spud wasn’t exactly conducting an investigation. He was home. There was food. As far as he was concerned, we needed to move.

Then the metal box showed up again.

Hmmm.

I was confused, so I knew the rest of these intellectually challenged felines had no clue what was happening.

This went on for what I can only describe as FOREVER. The box would appear, there would be a loud noise, and then Jeff would carry somebody away. Eventually, that cat would come back, and the box would reappear.

It wasn’t unusual for members of the colony to disappear for a few days. Nobody told us what to do or where we could go. But coming home with matching ears was new.

You would think we’d have called a meeting.

Unfortunately, getting ten cats to pay attention at the same time requires food, and the food was in the box. That was the entire problem.

Remember when I said only one of us could fit in there?

Apparently, that was a suggestion.

On two separate occasions, Jeff managed to trap two cats at once.

Two. At once. And then two more.

Somebody was already inside eating, and somebody else apparently decided, “Well, I’m not waiting.”

We had watched this thing slam shut. We had watched Jeff carry it away. We had seen Spud come home with less ear than he left with. And still, the main concern was that someone else might be eating the good bits.

I’d like to tell you I was surrounded by idiots, but I also went in there, so I have to be careful how I phrase that.

In our defense, Jeff had spent days making the box seem perfectly safe. You went in, you ate, you came out. Nothing happened. Naturally, the one time you trusted the arrangement, dinner came with transportation.

Mama, however, was not impressed.

Of all ten of us, she was the hardest to catch. With each passing day, we expected Mama to disappear, only to show up a few weeks later with 4 or 5 new kittens.

Jeff could put food in that box, arrange his bottle and string, and get himself ready. Mama was under no obligation to participate.

I respected that. Someone needed to remind him that buying a trap did not automatically put him in charge.

The younger cats had made this look far too easy. Four of us had practically offered a group discount. Mama was making up for the rest of us.

Jeff kept trying, though, and eventually, with some help from Britanie, a seasoned trapper, and a drop trap… Mama was caught. When it happened, it was no more than a day or so, if not hours, before it was too late.

That should tell you something about the determination of Fresno TNR volunteers.

Most of us were and still are quite standoffish. We figured playing the role of a barn cat was a fair trade for the food and shelter we were provided. Nobody was here to make friends.

Then there was Nibbles. He got his name from nibbling on Jeff’s fingers when he fed us that world-famous chicken.

Nibbles is the friendliest of us. Jeff is especially attached to him, and Nibbles did nothing to discourage this.

Some of us were trying to figure out why our meals now involved a door. Nibbles was busy having a relationship.

Honestly, read the room.

It’s difficult to complain about the food guy when one of your own keeps providing him with positive feedback. I had concerns about his methods. Nibbles was a satisfied customer.

I considered taking the matter to C.S., but that was unlikely to accomplish anything.

You see, C.S. is short for Customer Service. He has markings that look like a headset microphone running from his ear toward his mouth. He looks as though he’s about to say,

"Thank you for calling. How may I help you?”

He is not.

You can explain your entire problem to C.S., and he will sit there looking qualified until something moves in the bushes. Then your call has been disconnected.

So I was on my own.

As Jeff worked his way through getting us fixed, he learned just how much his new hobby was accomplishing. Three of us young females turned out to be pregnant too, and we juveniles were only about twelve to sixteen weeks old. Each discovery was another litter he was preventing, another reason he was glad he’d started.

Five pregnancies among ten cats.

Fine. Apparently, the food guy knew what he was doing. Nobody tell Nibbles. He’s already unbearable.

With help from Fresno TNR, Jeff got all ten of us spayed or neutered. We went through recovery and came home to our familiar little world, where I assumed we could finally get back to a normal meal schedule.

But Jeff had developed a new habit.

He was looking at ears.

Previously, a cat could pass through the neighborhood without having its head inspected.

Now Jeff noticed who had an ear tip and who didn’t. There were still neighborhood males who needed fixing, and unfortunately for them, our food guy now knew how to do it.

He kept going. Eventually, the man who had never trapped a cat in his life had personally TNR’d fifteen.

We had accidentally trained him.

Around our two houses, life carried on. Chicken and Mama were still here. Nibbles remained shamelessly friendly. Mustache was still pretty cool. Cali, Grey, Spud, Socks, and C.S. continued doing whatever they pleased.

And I continued supervising.

Jeff says I’m the biggest pain in the ass. He also says I’m probably the boss. I’m pleased he’s beginning to understand the structure.

The difference was that our family stopped getting bigger. No more litters from Chicken or Mama. No kittens having kittens. Just the same ten cats, home again, with a food guy who now knew how to help us beyond filling a plate.

I’ll give him that. He did a good thing.

But I don’t want him getting the wrong idea. Nibbles can handle employee appreciation. I have standards to maintain.

Jeff? That’s fifteen cats. We’ve counted them. You can stop doing math now.

Where’s the Chicken?