Warning: insane kitty cuteness ahead:

Lynn Voedisch, journalist, author, and wife of friend and colleague Dr Brad Blumenthal, has been writing-up their efforts to capture some of the stray feral kittens in their neighborhood:

If the Xanga photo editor will let me, I will show you the kittens who are in our backyard. BTW, they are extremely fast moving and this was through our not-so-clean sliding glass door, so the shots aren’t stellar.

This is the little ginger and white kitten and Mom. The ginger kitten seems to have something wrong with its right eye and we are going to have the vet look at it when the kitten is caught. It’s probably just some conjunctivitis. Another kitten had it before and it went away.

Here’s the little tortoiseshell kitten. It seems to be the smallest one, perhaps the runt of the litter. But what a cute face!

Here we have the ginger kitten looking into the Weber grill. (What’s it looking at? Its reflection. Endlessly fascinating.) The white kitten having a drink of water in the foreground has amazing markings. She’s all white with ginger ears and tail.

This is the pose I like to call “fashion cat.” The white one is showing off her remarkable fur. She also has lovely blue eyes. She will make a fabulous pet for whoever gets her.

So, those are the kitties. Trap night is tonight and we’ll see what we can get. There are also at least three other adults hanging around and we may get those too. We’d like to spay and neuter all of them. The kittens are too young for that. They just need a check up, de-fleaing, and the ginger one needs the eye checked.

Lynn’s full writeup is on her blog, but Brad’s more pragmatic summary of the results of the trapping process was shared with me via IM:

[That’s] three kittens off the streets. Two adult cats TNR’d (Trapped, Neutered, Released). One of the adults was pregnant, so that’s one more litter of kittens that does not become part of the food chain. Two males and one female neutered (total).

One adorable ginger tabby with a very bad case of conjunctivitis is getting treatment and quality lap time. Her eye is much better after just a couple of days, and she can open it.

One tortie who is a little crazy, but will probably settle down (all torties are a little crazy). She should eventually be a good pet.

One utterly gorgeous white cat with pale ginger face, ears, and tail who may or may not settle down (he was pretty wild at the vet, but neutering may calm him some).

Three possums I want to beat the crap out of.

Unless the two other adults that we had seen infrequently start showing up again, I’m out of the fur trapping business. No fleas, no ear mites. Worms treated in all of them.

Overall pain and suffering on the planet, probably a marginal net decrease (although I’m sure the males would have other opinions).

Oh yes, working names:

• Ginger (Mademoiselle X) == Xanga
• Tortie (Mademoiselle Y) == Yvonne
• White male (Mousier Z) == Zoomer
• Male adult == Mousier A
• Female Adult == Madame B

…and it makes a great deal of sense, especially for existing cat owners, to clean-up and rehome the local strays so that they don’t provide a pool for nasty bugs like Feline Leukemia or AIDS.

What surprises me is that I’ve never heard of anyone over here in the UK, amongst the general public, doing the same thing. It seems to be foisted off onto the RSPCA or Cat Protection League.

Hohum.

Obligatory Social Media Footnote: Lynn’s book some weeks ago got her (what I shall call) suckered into a virtual blogging book launch – reviews seeded on different blogs, some sort of chain of connection linking them all… it’s probably fortunate that I can’t remember the name of the company who suggested and took money for organising it because it was pretty clear to me that it takes more than that to build a community buzz.

However one thing I was shown when I visited Brad and Lynn a couple of months ago, was that they’d done a video trailer for ‘Excited Light’; what I did not realise was that this is apparently quite trendy.