Catboy - Eric Walters [42]
“It is a very, very much fun thing to do! I will show you!” Mr. Singh exclaimed.
He started up the engine, and we all backed away. He spun the forklift around like it was a bumper car at the carnival.
Mr. Singh drove forward and crashed the forklift into another section of the fence, and wood and metal fell to the ground. It was like he was unpeeling the junkyard as more and more of the fence disappeared beneath the forklift. He continued until the hole was large enough to drive a transport truck through, sideways. He shut the engine off and jumped down with a big smile on his face.
“I figure since I am fired, I might as well enjoy myself,” Mr. Singh explained.
“You’re going to get fired?” I exclaimed.
“Most certainly! What sort of security guard would allow somebody to take down a section of the fence he was guarding? But please, it only saves me from quitting!”
I was wrong. It was more like a military campaign than a safari we were on. Dr. Reynolds placed traps around the heart of the colony. Each of the traps was baited with salmon and chicken chunks.
It hadn’t taken long for the first catches. Within an hour of the traps being set and us backing away, we’d caught the first cat, followed quickly by the second, third and fourth. We brought the cats back to the van and transferred them to holding cages and then returned the traps to the colony.
As Dr. Reynolds had suggested, we hadn’t fed the cats for the past three days. Our best tool was their hunger. The new fence kept most of the cats from leaving the yard to find food, and a lot of the rodents in the yard had been scared away by the trucks and activity. The cats were so hungry, they couldn’t resist the traps.
I heard a metallic thud and knew we had caught another cat. I slipped on my gloves. By the time I circled around the wrecks to where I thought the sound had come from, there were already people at the trap. Simon and Doris were both peering in. I hurried to their side.
It was another one of the teen cats, one of Miss Mittens’s kittens, who were not so small anymore. That made me happy. If we caught one of her kittens, then maybe we could catch her. So far I hadn’t even seen her, or Hunter, or some of the others, including King. I wondered if the mouth of the trap would even be big enough to let King in. If he was caught, it would take a crane to move him to the truck.
“Let me take that,” Dr. Reynolds said. He picked the cage up. The cat hissed and snarled and bumped against the bars, trying to get away from him. “It’s okay, kitty, nobody is going to hurt you,” he said.
I don’t think the cat believed him. “This makes five. We’ve already got ten percent of the colony,” I said. “At this rate we’ll have them all within ten hours.”
He picked up the cage. “It would be nice if it worked that way, but I’m afraid it doesn’t.”
“Sure it does,” I said. “One hour for ten percent, so that means ten hours for one hundred percent.”
“I’m not questioning your math,” he said.
I followed him back to the van.
“It will get progressively harder to catch cats as we go on. The first ones we caught are the younger, less cautious ones.”
He opened up the back of the van, and the cats jumped against the bars of their cages, trying to get away from us. He placed the trap against an empty cage and opened the doors of both. A few shakes and the cat slipped through the opening of the trap and into the cage. Dr. Reynolds closed the cage, picked up the empty trap and closed the van’s doors.
“My guess is that for Hunter and King we’re going to have to use the snares or the nets,” Dr. Reynolds said. “That’s probably the only way we’re going to get a cat like Hunter, especially since he’s already been in a trap. He won’t make the same mistake twice.”
I knew Dr. Reynolds was right. I’d been thinking the same thing. If we were able to catch every cat in the colony except one, it would be Hunter. I tried to ease my guilt by thinking that if any of the cats could survive without the colony, it would be him. The thought made me feel a little better, but