Hickory and Walnut

Two more down!

On Wednesday evening we were able to catch two of our elusive all black cats! I still don't know how many there are total but it's a good start.

First we have Walnut. Turns out he's a male, TCAP estimates about a year old. Green eyes, totally all black. It's not that obvious in this picture but he has a big square face. Very impressive and intimidating looking guy. He put up quite a fight when he got trapped. My dad was lucky to be wearing closed toed shoes as Walnut reached through the bars to try to claw his feet.

Our second is Hickory. A female, she has gorgeous amber eyes and a tiny white tuft of fur on her chest. It's hard to get a picture that shows how pretty she actually is. She's also a fighter. I've never heard a cat hiss as much as she did when we carried her to the car in her trap.

Both of these guys are serious fighters. They are not enjoying captivity but are doing ok. They are at least eating, which is more than Honeysuckle and Pinecone did. As Hickory was an adult lady, I need to keep them in the kennel at least 48 hours. That puts them being released tonight but I'll wait until tomorrow if it's storming like the forecast says.

While trapping these two, we became aware of a few more black cats watching this all go down from a yard behind us. We're going to move our feeding and trapping to see if we can coax a few more out. There are at least 4 more identified cats to trap. We still have Juniper to get, then the young black cat I call Ash. There's at least two more adult black cats (Elm and Ivy) and then a new grey and white one who looks like Sunflower called Willow (pictured below). I wouldn't be surprised if there are more that start turning up once we move yards though.