The Great Garage Lock-In: How Trapping Lady Bug Led to Litter Number Four

Aug 16, 2026

By the time litter number three had come along, we were already saying it out loud in the driveway: you've got to be kidding me. We were still in the middle of getting the third litter spayed and neutered, still trying to figure out how you even catch a fully feral mother cat. She only came around to eat and make sure her babies were safe. She would eat but if we came outside on the porch she would bolt. We thought about getting a trap but didn't love the idea of it. Three litters later and Lady Bug still wasn't cooperating. We couldn't get within thirty feet of her. She had been gone for a while and when we saw her next we could tell she was pregnant AGAIN and winter was coming. So eventually we did the only thing that was going to work: lured her into the garage with food, and shut the door behind her. She was furious — growling, fierce, and still completely unapproachable weeks later. Here's the part that makes the whole ordeal worth it in hindsight: that lock-in is the reason the fourth litter exists the way it does. Cream, Puff, PayPay, and Ulti — "Oh My!" — were the first kittens born inside, safe in the garage, instead of outside in the woods behind the house like every litter before them. Because we never saw the previous 3 litters of kittens until they could walk and climb fences on their own we don't know that all survived. It that was the case it would be pretty miraculous as we live in a very rural area of North Carolina teaming with wildlife. Trapping a furious, pregnant feral cat in a garage doesn't feel like a win in the moment. It just happened to be the thing that gave four kittens an easy, and spoiled, life from day one. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of drama going on in the house by the time the fourth litter popped out overnight, just not the life & death kind of drama. Lady Bug's fully indoors now and transformed from a terrified and scrawny feral cat with no human contact to — a happy, fat, loaf of bread, proud mom spoiled by 14 of her own kids. But that lucky day we found her in the garage — we went around and shut Bug's garage cat door from the exterior — stands out as the moment things actually started turning around for neglected, frightened, hungry Lady Bug.