EMERGENCY: Toshy is dying on the street, help us save her NOW

This is Toshy and while you are reading this she is in terrible trouble. Broken, twisted and inflamed, Toshy’s front paw is currently one huge big lump and she needs help.

We don’t know who did this to Toshy. We know only that this black beauty, once a sweet and trusting neighborhood cat won’t let anybody close.  She avoids anything unfamiliar or suspicious, and anything that has to do with people or their items.

Since we discovered her we’ve been trying to help. Not one of our methods worked, not one of the trapping efforts succeeded, not one of the ideas we came up with brought success. Toshy would not go into a drop trap regardless of how many hours we spend waiting; she won’t eat food laced with a dose of sedative; she won’t come close enough to be caught with a fishing net.  What’s worse, we’ve  seen her drink a lot of water and it could be that her body is already fighting kidney problems and chronic infection.  We have only one last chance –  a net gun.

Toshy’s days are numbered and every moment on the street could be her last.

This is an urgent and desperate plea.

This is a plea for Toshy’s life.

Please help us purchase a net gun, which will allow us to safely and humanely capture Toshy – to save her life!

UPDATE  5/1/2015

We have reached our goal! The net gun is ON ITS WAY! The magic of Let’s Adopt is not in following one person, but in the community that acts! An animal like Toshy is not alone! She has amazing people behind her that step up and do everything they can to help her. Many people helped and two, especially, went above and beyond. Thank you to everyone, and a special thank you to Chrysanthe and Stephani! Let’s get Toshy to safety!!  While we wait for it to come, we will continue to try and trap Toshy.

UPDATE  5/20/2015

We got the net gun a week after we appealed for help from our community and help came.  It took three days to release it from customs, but in the end we had it!

We did some practicing, aiming, shooting and catching.

Then on the day we went live, the net got snagged on a root.. and Toshy ran.

We pulled in some men, asked for help, and went practicing again.

Then we went back to Toshy..

.. and Toshy outran the net.

So we decided to give her a break from the shooting, which was quite stressful, and create a manually activated snare. We did some testing.

We set up the snare under a useful structure near the spot Toshy gets fed, and asked the lady who feeds her to place the food in the middle of the net.

Toshy never approached. It was a change – a new place for food to be. And Toshy does not do change. This is how she survives, by avoiding anything new and unfamiliar.

So we went back really early the next day, 06:30 am to avoid the hustle and bustle of the late morning, and we set up the snare right in the spot she usually eats. We camouflaged it with grass and stuck little post-it strips high up along the cord to alert passersby. We even wore barrier gloves to avoid getting our smell on the grass and net.

We waited for a few hours until Toshy appeared around 09:30 am. All was going well, Toshy’s lady was guiding her towards the net, the net was invisible, our volunteer had the end of the cord and was snuggled in between the cars, Toshy was coming along..

Then a delivery truck trundled in and stopped right next to Toshy. At the same time a loud group of students walked by, noticed our volunteer hiding between the cars holding the pull cord, saw what the cord was attached to and started yelling and cheering, excited that something interesting was about to happen.

Toshy had almost stepped onto the net when she turned around and fled.

We cannot cordon off the place because we don’t have enough people available simultaneously, and the spot is a busy little intersection.

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These unsuccessful attempts to catch Toshy are worrying us immensely. We understand she is in urgent need of help but at the same time we are terribly concerned she may get fed up with all the intrusions into her until recently peaceful world, and relocate. Cats are roaming creatures and are known to move to another feeding ground if their current one becomes inconvenient, risky, or dangerous. So while fully aware of the urgency we have to time our attempts and give her space or we will lose her forever.

Toshy has become very weary of our volunteers and does not allow them to approach anymore. She mostly stays underneath cars and just peeks out from there. While she is under a car the net gun cannot be used. On some days she does not turn up at all until everyone’s gone, and hours later her lady catches a glimpse of her from the balcony.

The people Toshy trusts are elderly, and even though she allows them somewhat close they do not have the agility or strength to capture her. These kind people unfortunately aggravate the problem by constantly trying their own ideas of catching Toshy, like throwing a blanket over her (below). She easily evades these attempts but they compound to contribute to her weariness. Our volunteers caught this on camera after having advised against such methods.

As we’ve done from the beginning, we keep considering different ways of trapping her safely.  We have decided to get a dog trap. It has a very wide entrance which is quite different to the low narrow entrance of a cat trap, and may not feel as restrictive. We hope Toshy could get used to entering given the right circumstances.

Before we learnt about her animal rescue groups have tried to catch Toshy with a classic cat trap. She never came close.  We tried. She never came close.  Other cats were caught, but not Toshy.  The traps could not be left out overnight because they are immediately stolen. So we sat and waited for hours, to no avail. It became a full-time job for some.  We have decided to risk this trap being stolen, chain it to a tree and leave it in place for as long as necessary. We will position the trap right next to the spot Toshy eats, remove the door, and camouflage the contraption with branches, leaves and grass. We will train Toshy’s lady to offer food in front of it and then slowly move inward. We will monitor daily and once kitty starts going inside, we will install the door and trap her.

So this is what we have been doing.

Our volunteers have been at the spot almost daily. We wanted to spare you the disappointment and only share the good news once we capture this beautiful black cat. Toshy, however, is too smart for her own good and while we will not give up on her, we cannot tell you she is safe yet.

And remember – these are all volunteers you are reading about. Nobody is a trained animal capture specialist (which tried but eventually gave up).  Our volunteers have day jobs. They are doing all this on their own time, not having much experience with a trap-savvy animal , in a place where it is “do it yourself because there is nobody else to do it”, a place where even finding the CO2 cartridges for the net gun was truly a mission, a place where half the passersby would rather kill the cat, and the other half think our volunteers are crazy.

Anyone who has done TNR for a very long time knows that when you get a trap-savvy cat, it could take months to catch them.

UPDATE 6/10/2015

Since we last shared an update of our efforts to capture Toshy, we have
continued with our plans to give her some space while installing
a thief-proof trap at the location. She had been coming to eat
regularly as per her usual daily routine, skittishly gobbling bits of food and either immediately taking off afterwards, or staying for a while in a sunny spot between cars.

We thank those kind people who have been doing TNR for years and who wrote to us with encouragement and advice. We agree with your opinion – catching a clever and trap-savvy cat such as Toshy can sometimes be a longer project than hoped for.

Then a couple of days ago Toshy did not appear and we’ve been waiting for her to return since. Toshy is not spayed and we are hoping she has followed the song of nature and has undertaken a spring journey with a furry fellow, soon to return. A couple of tomcats have been trying to catch her attention lately; they come and eat with her, then hang around the parking lot near the cars she hides under.

Something very important we discovered since we first set eyes on Toshy is that the hideous thing her leg has transformed into is most likely not an abscess.

Had it been one Toshy would have long been dead as no living being can survive such an infection within the body for long. We found out that a few people who cared about her have been trying to catch Toshy since before Christmas! The leg was apparently only slightly damaged then and it slowly grew into the monstrous thing now hanging off her elbow. We have reviewed the many videos of Toshy together with our trusted vets and they, given the time frame we are reporting, have come to the conclusion that what we are seeing is some kind of bone deformation and/or calcification due to the damaged leg being constantly dragged against the hard road surface.

This explains why Toshy has survived for so long and gives us much necessary hope that she still has some time, and some kitty lives left for our “trapping her in a trap” plan to unfold.

UPDATE / August 18, 2015

A while ago Toshi stopped coming to her feeding place. We kept visiting the area but she is yet to return. By then we’d realized the growth on her leg was probably neither an abscess nor an aggressive tumor, but a calcified old wound. A tumor or abscess would have killed Toshi in a much shorter timeline than the neighbors, who had been trying to help her since Christmas, reported.

We are left with the hope that Toshi, an incredibly smart and trap-savvy cat, has relocated to a new place because she was finally disturbed by the capture efforts. We hope that if she managed to evade our very dedicated local volunteer team (who even called for advice on the wild cat handlers of the local zoo) she will continue to be safe. Little Toshi seems to have learnt to live with her disability and to escape any threat.

WE LOVE YOU, TOSHI. We wish you’d allowed us help you. May you be protected from all harm, we hope you have found a new sweet lady to feed you tasty treats.

And we hope that maybe, just maybe, you will return. <3

Thank you for caring about Toshi!

Thank you for sending us questions & advice, for the shared prayers and the help with the net gun purchase, for keeping her in your thoughts and following her live rescue.

 

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