When you’ve trapped your community cats, you can follow these steps to keep your cats as calm as possible until their surgery.

1. Bring the cats inside to a dry, temperature-controlled environment and set the thermometer to 70°F. A basement, spare bathroom, or quiet side room in your home will work best.
2. Keep the cats in their traps until the day of your appointment, and no longer than 48 hours. 
3. Don’t handle community cats. For your and the cats’ safety, do not attempt to handle a community cat. Be sure to thoroughly wash your hands and change your clothes and shoes each time you engage with the cat through the trap or go into the room the cat is housed. If your community cat does bite you, seek immediate medical attention and contact your local county animal control.   
4. Feeding community cats in the trap. When feeding the cats, lift the back door of the trap slowly until you have a very small gap. Place wet food on a plastic Tupperware lid and slide it through the gap without placing your hand inside the trap. If you cannot do this safely, you may put wet food on a plastic lid and gently place the entire trap on top of the food so it comes through the bars. DO NOT OPEN THE TRAP. The cats must have no food after midnight the night before surgery. Check on them periodically.  
5. Transporting community cats. On your appointment day, please transport cats safely inside a vehicle. Make sure they remain inside the covered traps and that the traps are placed on a flat surface. If traps must be stacked, place puppy pads or newspaper between the stacked traps and secure the traps with bungee cords or other restraints so they don’t topple over.