Last Updated: Thursday, April 22, 2010 We have quite a menagerie of cats at our house; 3 more than we wished, and 4 more than we
planned. But hey, things happen, so sometimes numbers can get out of whack. At 7 cats, our numbers have definitely gotten out of whack! We’ve put the brakes on though and NO MORE CATS until attrition brings us back down to 3 cats. As you read these, I think you’ll gain a little understanding as to why and how the number got so high on us. “Stuff happens” as they say! And, as of this February
2009 Update, the situations worsens in some ways See the link to “Our Feral Cats” in the chart below.
First, there’s Shortie. 
Shortie came to us as as a tiny kitten. His history was that his Mother died of frostbite but his siblings were OK. They thought Shortie was going to die also and he had lost parts of his extremities to freezing. His name at the Shelter was “Lucky” for the day or so that he lived there. Since it was a mystery as to whether he would live or not, and he had such deformities he was most likely unadoptable, we were quick to agree to foster
him for whatever his future might be. And, long story short, he thrived after the first couple of weeks and wiggled his little heart right into our lives!
His “deformities” were that he had lost parts of three legs and the tip of his tail. However, neither our vet nor us are sure whether they were caused by frostbite or a birth defect. It’s just not clear. - One back leg is missing from about mid-point on down. No pads of course, but a spot of bare skin where he walked on it.
- The other back leg is missing from above the the ankle down to the foot, but there is a pad there on the end of the leg, which is what makes us doubt the freezing story the owners told us.
- One front leg is missing the foot part . No pads, but bare skin where he walked on it. So the best we could tell, maybe the owners were telling the truth and didn’t know there were also deformities there. After all he was a barn cat and only recently noticed. Oh, and his mother apparently froze to death according to the story.
- The other front leg is normal, complete with all 5 (sharp and fast growing) claws, which we must continually trim. And trim. And ...
So, each leg is a different length for the poor fellla! He has an angular, sort
of a sideways, almost crab-like walk and tries to walk on all 4 feet. He’s better at running and does sort of a 3-feet/2-feet-3feet/... gait that gets him around surprisingly well. Impressively well, in fact, after you get past the humor of seeing him the first few times. At first he was pretty sickly and weak, dehydrated and suffered from
malnutrition. He came around well though, and quickly became a very charming kitten with a great disposition and an apparently boundless love of life. His deformities were nothing to him and never slowed down his growing up process at all. He’s the most social of all the cats we’ve ever had too, both with dogs and other cats. Everyone loves him and he loves everyone. Well, his fostering time was up and it was time to bring him back to the Shelter. It turned out though, that his chances for adoption were very poor; the shelter census was high, his deformities would require special care probably for life, and they thought most people would see him as an outcast with so many others to choose from.
Well, we’d already fallen in love with him so: We adopted him! He was just so happy and nice a cat, we couldn’t let him go! He’s going on three now (2008), and is perfectly healthy and happy. ALL the
cats and dogs get along well with him (he’s the ONLY one we can say that about), and very playful. His growth is stunted, probably due to his rough beginnings, so he’s not a big Tom cat, but he’s normal sized. And beautiful; white with a touch of orange here and there and blue eyes. We seriously wondered if we could afford a prosthesis at least for the
shortest leg so he could have two similar length back legs, and waited anxiously for him to grow so we could actually look into it further. But, prosthesis turned out more expensive than we could really afford, and he showed us every day that he didn’t really seem to need it! NOR does he like his feet touched in any way! You’d be surprised how handy he can be with that single front set of claws!
The only thing he’s ever asked of us was to give him “paths” around the house of carpeting of any sort; he can walk fine on carpeting, but a slippery hard floor gives him trouble. So, we make sure he has carpets from his feeding place to his litter box and into the living room and our bedroom. Now you tell me who runs this household? Yeah, HE does! At any rate, our vet
didn’t think a prosthesis would help that much and warned us such a thing might cause a lot more skin and lesion problems than going without them. So that was kind of a relief, because we were determined to get prosthesis somehow if it/they would help. Mostly I wanted his back feet to be the same length.
Then we were advised that the best way to do that really, would be to have
both legs cut off to the same length, but gee, that one leg was SO short he’d have almost nothing left to use back there. The vet agreed and said the loss of the extra muscle he’d lose probably wasn’t worth the risks of the surgery. So, we’ve never had anything done for him in that way. And unfortunately he can’t tell us what he’d like because as far as he’s concerned he’s perfectly happy. The only physical “problem” he still has is, since he’s missing all those pads and has to walk on skin, his feet can get red and painful at times. During those times we get out a small dog cage and he spends a couple nights in that, recuperating. That way he can’t be tempted to run and play by the other
animals in the house and won’t be bothered. Yes, he gets food, water and a litter box in there too, of course!
Now whenever we notice his paws (stubs?) getting red, we get out that cage for him: He watches it being set up, and goes right into it without any urging at all. He knows it’s HIS! If we’ve misjudged and he doesn’t need/want the cage, he lets us know, too! Did I mention that he’s also a very
vocal cat? Well, he is. He’s getting calluses now and needs the cage less and less but still, probably about once a month, likes his little haven for a night or two. HE never complains, and there’s nothing wrong with HIM, as far as he’s concerned! And you know what? There really isn’t anything “wrong” with him; he’s just “different”, and a wonderful pet! He’s also a celebrity when folks
visit - it’s usually pretty funny to watch him walk that ambling, sideways walk of his. But then, when he runs, you’d hardly know his feet were any different than any other horse, err, cat! He runs more like a horse than a cat. He’s here for all his days now and we share a special unconditional love that
I think many people probably miss out on. Shortie’s a great guy!
BUZZER:  Buzzer is the only “normal” cat we have! And believe me, I use that term cautiously!
Buzzer started out as a foster kitten, only we lovingly called them foster kits. But at the same time we were also Foster Parents, and had Foster Kids. ANYway, one of our Foster Kids took to the kitten and got pretty interested in him. He begged, cajoled, made deals, everything he could think of to get us to keep the
kitten around for him. Well, we only had one cat, so was said OK, we’ll do it. And thus Buzzer came into the family. He was healthy, simply motherless (if that can be “simple”) and needed the 24/7 care and feeding of a mom, so we became mom for him. One of our dogs got
into the act too, mothering the kitten, licking the milk from his face and licking him until he had a bowel movement, all that good stuff. Did a good job of it, too! So, Buzzer grew up with a couple of step-folks, one of whom was a dog! He’s still with us of course, and actually turned out to be my wife’s cat. He doesn’t really have any use for me and allows me to inhabit the same room
my wife does, as long as HE is the one that gets to sleep on her pillow every night! Well, pillow might not be completely correct; he would rather sleep on her side r back or whatever part of her was “up” at any given time, but after a few swats he’d settle for the pillow or at her feet. He even leads the pack in getting her up every morning right at the crack of dawn! Every morning she wakes up to him gently pawing at her forehead until she wakes up. A few time he tried to bite her on the chin, but ... believe me, you do NOT wake my wife up like that! After sailing across the room a couple times from her swats at him, he settled instead for the gently paw touches on her forehead. Smart cat! Other than he’s perfectly “normal” in every way, Buzzer is just a lovable, cuddly-to-my-wife cat with no use whatsoever for me. He’s a part of the family of course, and we’re as happy with him as he is of us (I hope!).
SWEETIE:  Sweetie is a pretty special gal, again one of our foster kits. She came to us pretty sickly and her eyes were welded closed from the dried mucous and other
stuff that covered them.
It took some patience to soak them open again but it worked; then we had a respiratory infection to get her past. It wouldn’t be the first time we lost a foster kit, and we thought we might lose her too. As she began her slow recovery we noticed her eyes weren’t
just right either, the right on in particular. So we took her back to the vet and he gave us some salves and creams to use for her until she was healthy enough to stand some further possible work.
Once she was on the mend and feeling/acting more like a cat, we returned to the vet to have her eye looked at again. She acted like she had something in her eye all the time and thus usually kept it closed. He found the third
eyelid (didn’t know they had three) was damaged and removed part of it, seemingly giving her almost instant relief. But she had to stay on antibiotics for a few more weeks yet, so he gave us more stuff to smear in her eyes for her discomfort. The respiratory infection was keeping her eyes constantly running and crusting, so it took daily efforts to keep her eyes clear. Finally we made it past the respiratory infection and she began to thrive. But that right eye was still giving her trouble and running. Finally the vet removed the entire third eyelid, and that solved her problem. It was a long time before her eyes stopped running though, and they still do to this day only it’s much less and usually not a problem she can’t clean herself. Well, all that care and attention to get her healthy had taken its toll on us. We had to extend her foster time because she was judged adoptable, but ... we’d had her to long we decided we couldn’t part with her. So that brought us up to 3 cats in the house. A lot, we knew, but one short of what we (my wife) decided would be our maximum number. And she stayed.
I’m really glad she did stay because she’s a pretty fragile cat. Here eyes need watching and care now and then, though nothing serious or difficult. That upper respiratory infection apparently damaged her systems and she may not live to a ripe old age as most cats would, but she is at least very happy with us and of course an important part of the family. She’s a small cat too, very
pretty, and of course playful and as much fun as the rest of them. .
PHOEBE:  Phoebe was to be our next adoption. Phoebe was found at one of the local motel’s outdoor fat drain. You can imagine what she must have
looked like! The SPCA staff thought she might be feral, but they weren’t sure because she seemed to exhibit signs of domestication and feral at the same time. She was definitely a loner though, and had been picked up as a stray.
My wife, as a volunteer at the SPCA Shelter, had cause to see Phoebe
every time she was at the shelter socializing the cats. After several weeks, one of the staff mentioned to he that she was the ONLY person the cat ever reacted to or was glad to see. Not even the staff had been able to get Phoebe to even let them touch her let alone pet her as my wife was doing. For several weeks I listened to m wife when she came home telling me about Phoebe this and Phoebe that. I should have known what was up,
because as the population at the Shelter rose and euthanasia began to happen more often. When no on e had asked about adopting her, my wife went to work on me! And shortly we added another cat to our home; a now sleek, shiny black white chested, nearly silent cat. She never uttered a sound in the Shelter that anyone heard. This was no ordinary cat though! And still isn’t. After nearly 3 years
now, the cat will let me pet her as I pass by, even sometimes if she’s on a table or something, she’ll purr and rub a little bit on me. But that’s as far as it goes: I’m not allowed to pick her up, hold her, or anything else cats normally like. Now my wife, well, she can grab Phoebe, toss her in the air, squeeze her, and sit down with her, upon which she’ll turn her belly up to be
rubbed and will playfully grab at whatever is handy! But if I approach my wife during those times, she’ll quickly roll over onto her belly and stare at me with a warning that says if I come any closer, she’ll leave. Then she runs and hides from me! And she’ll treat a complete stranger better than she treats me! She won’t let them pick her up, but she’ll ask them for attention, none the less! She had a few things to get over though, when she first came to live with us. She ran and hid and we didn’t see her at all for the rest of that day and most of the next day until she got hungry enough to come out in the open to eat. Over the space of a couple weeks, she investigated the whole house, told all the other cats and dogs to leave her alone (successfully and
silently) and gave them wide birth at the same time. She was probably here a couple of months before she ever made a sound. She has a very high pitched, strange sound when she does meow. We thought she was sick, in fact, and took her to the vet. But he said
everything looked normal and not to worry about it. He was right. NOW she talks all the time in that high, squeaky voice of hers! I guess she just didn’t have anything to say before that! She is now a well nourished, happy and beautiful in her black coat,
member or our family. If anything unusual happens or a loud noise, she still runs and hides; it looks like that part of her isn’t going to change. She’s just a home-ized feral who discovered it’s pretty nice inside, and likes at least one of her humans a whole lot! So we’re pretty certain now that she is feral, but she has to be only first or second generation because it is not so strong
in her that she couldn’t be domesticated as long as you let it happen at her own rate. She is so pretty and so much fun to watch I’m perfectly happy with her.
Snow F. Lake aka Snowflake:  This is Snowflake. Snowflake was found abandoned, laying in a cold puddle of water one fall day by some kind person who picked her up and brought her almost lifeless body to the SPCA. A cat’s normal body temperature is around 103 degrees and when they took her temperature it read a paltry 95 degrees. No wonder she was almost lifeless. The SPCA staff warmed her
slowly and cared for her and shortly she came to life, pretty sick but with enough gusto to not be in any danger of dying. They had succeeded in bringing her back from the brink of death! She started to eat & drink right away and shortly was thriving. No one claimed her of course; she was just a throw-away. Another few minutes in that cold, nearly frozen puddle and she probably would have died, but fate had something else in mind for her.
This was my first time to get the idea that she might be a runt; I was hoping so, and I think that was the main reason we adopted her. But alas, it wasn’t to be; she made 9 pounds, small but not very small, for a cat. She is loving, attentive, likes to be petted and gets along well with everyone though.
Initially she was also all white but as you can see the oranges appeared later, as often happens with white cats. She’s a tender kitty, easily insulted and get hurt feelings easy it seems. And if you hurt her feelings, you have to be the one to be the bigger person and initiate the apologies (pick her up, squeeze her gently, breathe on her ear until she purrs). But when you do that she can
give you back a very comforting, warm feeling of appreciation and love. Like a little princess, she is a full fledged member of our family now.
PSI
 This is Psi. Psi, and here sister Mu, originally belonged to my son and his family. At the age of about 4 my grandson became allergic to their cats
in a big way and they had to get rid of them, much as they hated to; they had a substantial investment of the heart and appreciation for the two cats and really hated parting with them. So, Mom and Dad stepped in of course, and offered to take them so they at least would still be around even if we did live 450 miles apart. So Psi arrived here as a full grown, healthy cat.
Losing her family though was harder on her than anyone ever thought. She moped around for weeks, watching the front door for her “family” to come back, even ignoring her cohort Mu. And to make matters worse, Mu became seriously ill and died within a month of leukemia no one knew she had. The vet diagnosed it quickly when we brought her in but it was too far
advanced; she died shortly afterwards. And poor Psi now didn’t even have her lifelong pal for company. It was months before Psi stopped watching the front door for them to return, and years before she actually began to forget them. My son and his family visit about every 6 months and upon their first
visit after leaving the cats here, Psi nearly went wild with glee over seeing them. Mu died before their next visit but Psi was still very glad to see them. Each time they left she retook up the watch at the front door, awaiting their return. After that she was a little less joyful to see them each time although she still watched the front door after they left. The last couple of times she still seems to remember them but she only watched the front door
briefly after they left. She’s a loner and doesn’t play much with the other cats, preferring her own spaces to company most of the time. She’s very sensitive, too. We let her share our bed with us but if we do something to insult her or scare her
she’ll disappear and won’t come back out until we go and get her. At first we let her have her space but then we started going to get her and realized she loved it when we’d go and bring her out of her hiding space, which was a shelf in the tub room closet. She would always meet us with a loud purr and upright tail and a happy look on her face, so it didn’t take too long to catch on. Apparently it was/is her way of being sure that we still love/want her
and that we won’t let anything happen to her. Psi is obviously above average smart and used to know a lot of tricks but either I didn’t work well enough with her or she just wouldn’t do them for any but her original family. The has forgotten them now. Although we
accepted her and her cohort Mu immediately, Psi took a long time to finally accept us and decide that she was “ours”, or the other way around, whatever it is that cats do. She is middle aged now and has a home here for as long as she lives; she’s part of the family.
K.C. KITTY CAT:  K.C. (aka Kitty Cat) woulda/shoulda/coulda been an SPCA adoption, but we bypassed a step or two in conjunction with the SPCA staff.
First of all, my wife found her
wandering, thin, sick and emaciated, and looking lost in a parking lot. The Shelter was closed though, so she brought it home with her and called them the next day to notify them. KC was too young to go directly to the shelter though as she needed to be bottle fed and nursed back to health, so we started the job. She was tinier than most and this time it was my fault we took such a liking to her because I thought she was going to be a runt; a
very small cat. I fell in love with her almost at first sight. So after she had been nursed back to health and was ready to return to the Shelter, we figured we’d save them some trouble and just adopt her without her actually having to go to the shelter. But as it turned out, she had never been checked in since it sounded like she may not live (we have had some who didn’t make it, sad as each case was). Well, that was even better. Since
no one had looked for her at the shelter, papers, radio, TV, etc., we just took her as our own and she never saw the inside of the Shelter. She’s a lucky little girl, that one. Well, she’s healthy, happy, faster than a speeding bullet as she almost
literally flies from room to room bouncing off the furniture here and there to extend her flights, and a cute, funny, beautiful and loving member or our family. Only I didn’t get my runt. Apparently she was just stunted from lack of
care and poor nutrition, because as soon as she got healthy she began to grow! She IS small, but she is not the runt I was hoping she would be. She is probably about 7 or 8 pounds of sleek, exceedingly fast moving feline ferocity! She’s all grown up now of course, and constantly amuses us with her “flights” all around the house. She is quite a gal! A fast woman, you might even say! OUR FERAL EXPERIENCE: Our feral visitors are: 1. MomKC (Mom Kitty Cat); 2. Star, a black female with a white start on her chest; 3. Tippy, a black cat with a tiny, almost invisible white tip on his tail and feet and a little white on his face; 4. Cali, a Calico tri color who often looks brown from a disance, and 5. Rusty, a tortie up close, but who looks gray from a distance. And they’re all rascals! Sometimes our plans work, sometimes they don’t. We’re true animal lovers and do everything we can whenever we can to help our furry friends in any way we can. As you may have noticed above though, we have one more dog thatn we “wanted”, because it just had to be in order to save a life.
Likewise we have 4 more cats than we “wanted”, for various reasons ranging from inheritances to a foster child’s pleadings and other such good reasons as we saw them. That gave us a total of 7 cats! WAY too many, and quite expensive to feed and keep up vet visits with, etc.. Historically however cats sometimes aren’t around long for many different reasons, and we expected attrition to bring our population back under control in a short time.
As with all plans of mice & men though, the attrition has NOT happened, and they’re now staunch members of the household. We are NOT hoarders, honest! We’ve a very strict rule about any further numbers being added and we’ve stuck firm to them. But as with all plans of mice & men, sometimes fate tries to interfere
with the normal flow of things and that’s happening right now. Don’t get me wrong; we still only have 7 cats. BUT ... fate had something else in mind for us. First came the signs that there was “something” in the trailer on the cold nights. Finally we
caught a glimpse of an emaciated, injured cat who could hide but was so weak she could barely get around. But she was not about to let us near her to even see how bad off she was. So, we’d leave a dish of high-protein cat food out for her and over night it would disappear. Our goal was to befriend her long enough to get her into a carrier and take her to the SPCA. After a week the cat apparently began to regain her health a little and would hide in
the shadows when we brought food and water. It seemed like she would eat and then disappear for the rest of the day, so we figured she must be getting a little healthier when she was always there waiting for her food and water. Then one day she let us actually get a good look at her. She was small,
and we couldn’t tell whether it was a kitten, teenager or adult. But in another day or so we noticed her nipples were swollen and realized why she would eat and then disapper: She was going to feed a litter! Which, thanks to our dogs’ noses, turned out to be underneath the trailer, in the under-floor insulation! Well, at least they were warm. Now we had to figure out what to do. We decided when she was healthy enough and the kittens a few weeks older we’d find a way to catch them all and bring them to the SPCA. Only by then we realized they were all feral, plus the Shelter was overloaded with cats, so it meant certain death to take them in. But, it was still our plan, much as it hurt. There turned out to be 4 kittens and she was just a runt; full grown, age unknown, and recently turned feral, we think, by having been abandoned for whatever reason. There was a tortie, a calico, an almost completely black kitten, and one with a bug white star on her chest. Their state of
malnutrition was even worse than their mother’s at that point and they were very young. Whatever caused mom’s injuries apparently prevented her from hunting and being able to feed her babies for quite some time and our hearts just went out to them. After a month or so, mom was letting us see her and even approach her
now and then. Twice daily feedings of powerful sick cat foods began to bring her along. Both her and the kittens began to show signs of healthier existence. Thanks to the snow cover and weather though hunting was almost non existent for mom, so we kept on feeding her, switching to more normal food as she regained her health and was able to feed her kittens. Then the sub-zero weather began to hit, so I made them up a thick-walled insulated box to live in and put it out for them to use instead of the cardboard boxes and blankets we provided. Mom was clearly allowing her kittens to be seen by us now although we weren’t allowed within more than about 4 feet of them. She seemed to be pretty proud of them. But mom apparently at one time lived in a house because a little later, the garage door having been left open, she came scrambling into the garage right between my feet. She looked around for awhile, then rushed right back out the same door which I’d purposely left open because I knew the kittens
were out in the trailer. My wife thought that was interesting and tried it a couple more time. Each time mom would come in, look around, and leave. Then the last time she discovered some food left there, ate it, and disappeared again. It was kind of cute, watching nature at work in her mind like that. She was almost letting us touch her by then, too, just not quite. There was an interesting event happened in the trailer about that same time too. Mother cat was goign around like she was looking for something but it was the next day before we were sure one of the kittens was missing. By now mom was frantic, and even leading us around to show is where to look. Well, she misled us because after cutting a hole in the trailer floor to
look into the insulated area underneath, and opening the walls to check there, we could occasionally hear the kitten when mom would call for it, but it was so weak it was almost impossible to tell where it was coming from. Finally, Mother cat, my wife and I were all standing in the middle of the
trailer and listening. But darned if she would call for it! Then finally my wife heard a faint scraping noise coming from the floor right under her. Only, we’d already opened that area up to look in it. Then my wife moved an old furnace blower out of the way to listen better, and the scraping noise was coming from inside it! Yup, the kitten had crawled into the squirrel-cage part of the fan, gotten wedged upside down in there, and couldn’t get out. Now, he COULD have just backed UP the shelf, and gotten right out! But apparently ma nature at that age says “Go forward youngster, go forward”, which led into the ever thinner reaches between the fan and the case! NOW mom cat
jumps in and tells us where her kitten is! A few scratches, some gentle manipulations later I had hold of the kitten by the hips and had him most of the way out, only he wouldn’t let go of the squirrel cage fins! Finally I got his tail and back legs in one hand and
before I lost my grip again, I pulled him free! For a few moments, that was ONE VERY grateful little, purring little kitten as I held him to me and tried to calm him. I was just about to comment on it when the kitten exploded into action like a buzz saw gone wild, and mom started to warn me in no uncertain terms to “git away” from her kitten!! Now, that’s what I call gratitude! Turns out, that kitten is the most adventurous of all 4 of them,
and we weren’t even certain 4 was the total number yet. But it was; mom had brought 5 kittens with her. We don’t know if there were others that died before she came to us or not since we’ve no idea where she came from. Well, the extremely cold weather continued, and the first time we
weren’t standing watching the door, she brought her kittens with her. They stayed a long time, investigating every corner of the garage. Since the garage is attached to the house, it doesn’t get much colder than freezing out there on the coldest of days, so my wife put some blankets & boxes out there for them and it took three more days before they actually moved into the garage. Which they COMPLETELY took over, even to telling me to get the
heck out! So, I was careful around them, and before long they decided it was OK for me to breathe the same air they did, and we became “neighbors” of a sort. We seldom ever saw the kittens but they were there and mom always knew how to call them out to eat or tell them to go hide. She’s a great communicator and they listened closely to her! I moved their super-insulated box in from the trailer for them, but apparently it wasn’t cold enough to need; they never used it again. I did catch the kittens playing in it a couple times though and after that it never got used again. I guess it was too easy a place to get cornered in so they avoided it, preferring instead the high shelves and hangers all around the
garage ceiling. There were cat beds, litter pans, food dishes and other paraphernalia all over the garage, to the extent of temporarily excluding room for the car! AND I had to be careful (by my wife’s dictate) to not badly frighten them since mom wasn’t really healthy enough to go out into that weather and fend for herself and her kittens! Yeah, right! I had my doubts they could be scared into leaving, but “she” had spoken! TO BE CONTINUED: Next: They take over my wood shop! Basement! No house! Ever! Waiting for spring!
Learning some things from mom Feral; lots of stuff!
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