I was just advised today to wear rubber gloves when handling traps and food so ferals don't smell human. I have never heard nor read this anywhere. Is this advised?
.
Humans can detect strong, pungent odours (e.g. hydrogen sulfide gas) at 3-5 parts per million in still air, at one atmosphere; cats' olfactory receptors operate at 3-5 parts per billion under the same conditions - roughly one thousand times the Human threshold.
Wearing rubber gloves (and especially if the gloves have first been rubbed in catnip prior to handling the traps, since the Human scent will be transferred to the outer surface of the gloves by the simple act of donning them, and thence to the traps) is a good, common sense approach to keeping Human scent off the traps.
.
rubber gloves do little unless the trap has been free of human contamination for a week or two.
this is standard procedure for catching wild animals, but is maybe a bit overkill for a cat.
it won't hurt tho.
Thanks. I have sprayed the traps with Clorox cleaner after each use, then well rinsed off, never use gloves and have caught a possum, a skunk and a few raccoons, so I don't think using gloves would be mandatory but as susieqz says, it can't hurt.
It won't hurt to wear gloves when setting up traps, but there's not much point to it because you'd have been putting out food for at least a couple of days beforehand to keep the cats congregating there, so they'd be familiar with the scent (and probably sight, at least from afar) of humans and equate it with food.
It is advisable to wear heavy work gloves when picking up a trap with a cat inside. Most will cower, but there are always a few that will go into full attack mode, and cat scratches easily become infected.
Thank you for that idea jcat. I started trapping here in 2011, having TNR'd almost 180 cats on my own and never thought to wear workgloves! That sounds like a very safe practice.
Wow, 180! One of my prized possessions is a pair of lined leather driving gloves that I use to pick up cages. Others wear work gloves. We generally keep trapped ferals in large quarantine cages at the shelter for a week after they've been fixed, in case of complications and to administer pain killers in food, then have to get them into carriers to release them. If it's a colony, we hold them in a large room or two until we've caught all or most of them, which means catching them again with spoon nets and transferring them to carriers for release. We use falconer's gloves for that, though many people recommend welder's gloves, which are probably easier to find.