Cats

While there are many causes worthy of time, money and attention and I have devoted some of each to various causes, the one closest two my heart involves feral and stray cats.

When my husband and I moved into our apartment after we were married, we quickly saw that there were quite a few wild cats around the 72-unit complex, but it wasn’t until a few years later that one showed up on our patio to ask for help.  She was pretty grey and white cat with green eyes, and she was obviously starving (and later we found out, pregnant).  Her coat had already started to go dull.  I sat and looked at her, knowing that if I fed her she would never leave, but I fed her anyway.  We weren’t supposed to have pets there, but I knew my husband missed his childhood cat.  This cat turned out to be very tame and insisted that she move into the apartment with us.  She’d run in the patio door; I’d pick her up and put her out.  She kept running in and I gave up on putting her out. I was amazed when I told her she was a “good kitty” and she started purring like she knew what that meant. She was house broken, smart, and very loving, and we never regretted letting her come live with us.  Mike named her Luka and she lives with us and makes us happy still.

Another cat at the complex wasn’t so lucky.  We called her Big Lewis.  She was black and white and had long, matted hair.  She’d obviously been taking care of herself for quite a while and was nobody’s pet.  We’d see her around.  She’d chase Luka if she could.  Then one day she showed with an utterly despairing looking in her eyes, so I put some food out for her.  She came back the next day.  The day after that she came back with two large kittens, mostly likely the reason she was distressed on that first day I fed her.  I try to get the Humane Society to help me with these cats, but the local Humane Society was utterly overwhelmed and never replied to my call or letters.  Another year passed, and one of Big Lewis’s kittens had two of her own.  All of Big Lewis’s family looked the same, black and white, some with short hair and some with long, and they looked out for one another.  Finally, I got some help that year.  Another woman and I caught Big Lewis’s two daughters and one granddaughter and had them “fixed” before we released them back at the complex.  Big Lewis disappeared that year; she’d not been looking well.  We weren’t able to catch Big Lewis’s grandson.  Another gray cat turned up that year.  He had been someone’s pet, but had not been fixed and had been abandoned.  We had to move out of the area, so I found someone to take over the feeding of the whole gang.  As I left, I just hoped that there would not be any more kittens to grow up feral, hungry, and unsheltered. 

The first day in my new home, I saw a thin white cat cutting across the yard.  As the weeks went on, I saw that he was starving and feral.  I started feeding him and another thin black and white cat that would steal his food if I didn’t feed both of them.  We named the white cat Steve and the black cat Tony.  One day Steve didn’t show up for breakfast, and when I came home from work, I found bloody paw prints around his bowl.  When I saw him next, his one back paw was swollen to twice its size and was obviously infected and extremely painful.  I tried catching him, but I was not successful until a couple of days later when he was so busy eating that I picked him up and held him tightly while my husband helped me put him in a carrier.  I still have the scars on my arm where he clawed me, but I knew if I let him go, he would die a slow, horrible death.  I took him to a vet who told me I should just consider putting Steve down because treating him was iffy, the costs would be high, and Steve would never be a pet.  Steve stayed at the vet’s office for five days and spent another two days in a cage at home.  Then when his antibiotics were finished, we let him go.  He still came back to be fed and sit in the yard with Luka and I.  One day he was very happy and rubbed up against me to be petted.  It turns out he wasn’t feral after all.  He’d sit by the back door and cry to be let in on windy nights; then he moved in and remembered how to use a litter box.  He tried very hard to be good and be nice to our other cat Luka.  He was also starved for attention.  He loved to be petted, fed, and brushed.  He seemed to be proud to wear his reflective collar with him name and phone number on it.  He’d been someone’s pet too.  Now he and Luka both live with us and give us a lot of entertainment and love.  Now Tony and another brown cat are our outside cats.

Until I met all these cats, I hadn’t realized how many cats are simply thrown away and how many people think cats aren’t even worth helping.  These cats were someone’s pets or the kittens of someone’s pets.  Someone took care of them once.  But none of those someones had their cats spayed or neutered, and they either abandoned them or, at least, didn’t provide them with the I.D. that could get them home.  Homeless cats’ suffering and premature deaths can only be stopped if enough people care enough to give their time, money and attention, so I try to do so and hope others will too.