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Journal of a Sabbatical |
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April 15, 2000 |
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focus on ferals |
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Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Today's Reading: Enlightenment through Rabies Prevention by I.M. Feral - just kidding, no time to read - well maybe a few pages of Cat on the Scent by Rita Mae Brown but I quit when I realized I'd just read the same page three times. Later... I did manage to concentrate long enough to read April 15, 1855 from Thoreau's journal on the Thoreau Home Page. Today's Starting Pitcher:
2000
Book List
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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Guest speakers included:
In the process of photographing this event for the MRFRS web site, I learned a heck of a lot about non-lethal management of feral cat colonies, and about rabies. I'm not usually involved with the feral cats, just with
the ones in the adoption From the photography point of view, how do you photograph an event that isn't particularly visual? Except for demonstrating how to use two types of traps, most of the content was discussion. A bunch of people sitting around listening to speakers doesn't have much visual appeal. The rabies guy had some computerized slides, which were kind of interesting, but even with the lights out in the conference room I couldn't quite capture the images with the digital camera. Too bad because he has this great map of Massachusetts with all the towns that have had confirmed cases of rabies shown in red and the towns with no confirmed cases in white. Talk about visual communication of data! Can you say epidemic, boys and girls? I knew you could. Your eye goes right to that huge white area on Cape Cod, dramatic evidence of the effectiveness of the oral rabies vaccine they used on the raccoons there - they drop bait loaded with the vaccine, raccoons eat it, they develop immunity... pretty cool. Man, until today I didn't know there was such a thing as an oral rabies vaccine. Somehow, when I left my soulless high-tech job, I never imagined I would be exclaiming over how cool oral rabies vaccine is! Or that I'd actually enjoy listening to a room full of people talking intelligently about rabies. Boy has my life gone into some interesting channels.
If my friends could see me now waxing eloquent about towels and oral rabies vaccines ... blank only knows what they would think... |
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Today's
mission was to photograph the Focus on Ferals conference - a
gathering of people who feed feral cats, live in a town with
a feral cat problem, or want to find out how to manage
colonies of cats effectively (no snickering, dear readers, I
really mean managing cats not software engineers).
The agenda for the day was learning how to trap, neuter,
vaccinate and release feral cats. Oh, and how to talk to the
press about it.
center (some of whom are former ferals who've been
socialized in foster homes), so a lot of things were news to
me that the feral trappers probably already knew.
Nancy
pointed out jokingly to me tonight that when I left
Cosmodemonic I could not possibly have anticipated that I'd
learn so much about the importance of towels either. I
certainly knew the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
advised you to carry a towel, but beyond that it's one of
the most useful tools on the planet. Say Meowster is going
after Shanti. The hissing starts. Fur starts to stand up.
The visual threat displays escalate. But, just in the nick
of time, you put a towel between them. They can't see each
other. The visual threat displays recede. They walk away.
Say you've just trapped a feral cat and it's thrashing
around in the trap freaking out. You put a towel over the
trap. The cat feels enclosed and secure. It calms down.
Maybe Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect really knew something
about managing cats.