The Cat Saga

[Teelah Angelwood]

Cats, dogs, any animal, and the wonderful people who love em

Good work Denmother

I have two dogs that I absolutely adore While cats and dogs are different animals with different habits, I do appreciate both Taking the time to rescue animals is often disparaged by people who feel that no animal could be nearly as important as their own lives, or the tasks that they feel need to be done before anything else "extra" is taken care of.


So I have to say that I admire you for putting things aside and watching over those helpless little ones, they surely needed your loving hands to guide them.

*hugs* how wonderful it is to know that there are so many wonderful, warm people in the world

[Magpye]

My Own Furpeople...

My own cats all started life as strays. I currently have three of my own, though I've looked after as many as ten at once (my own two, and fostering a mother with seven kittens for the local humane society).

The fostering was both heart warming and heart breaking - it was such a joy to take in a mother and her new born kittens, and raise them until they were old enough to be given their shots and adopted out. It was heart breaking on the couple of occasions where the mother cat infected her kittens with feline distemper and they all died.

There are two cats I remember the most from my fostering days - one because she became my third cat, and one that to this day I regret not adopting.

The first cat was a very feral mother...she was described to me as "overprotective", which I soon learned meant "wear protective gear when entering her room". Her very first day she tried to hide her kittens from me, inside the litter box, which of course is a bad environment for kittens. I still have vivid memories of gearing up in multiple layers of clothing (a thick parka, bike helmet, work boots, work goggles, ski gauntlets...this during hot June weather...) and holding her down with a broom while I fished the kittens out from the litter box. At one point she was hanging in mid-air with her teeth sunk into the tip of one glove finger (thankfully missing the finger inside) while yowling like an air raid siren...at another time she got free, leapt onto my arm, grasping it with her fore-legs, doing her best to disembowel my forearm with her hind legs while also attempting to bit me through the multiple layers of fabric...leaving a huge bruise from the force of her bite.

The Humane Society offered to come and take her away and put her down, but that would have meant having to hand-raise the three day old kittens, without them receiving the immune benefits of their mother's milk. I can be a very stubborn person. I set out to win this feral beast's trust.

Every morning when I woke up, when I came home at midday for lunch, and when I was home in the evenings, I would spend time in the room set aside for my foster cats, sitting on a trunk in the corner and talking to her, reading to her, and singing to her, so she wouldn't forget I was in the room. I brought in a toy I could safely play with her with (a stuffed lure on a string attached to a flexible plastic pole). I would sit very very motionless whenever she worked up the nerve to come and sniff me or strop herself against me. After two months of careful work, she finally began to let me pet her, though I had to be VERY sure she saw my hand coming, and never surprise her with sudden movements. And she began to let me play with her kittens, instead of going into a frenzy if they wandered over to me.

By the time her kittens were ready to be fostered out, I had her (limited) trust. One of her most endearing habits was that, when she felt like being petted, she'd walk up, sit down by my, tuck her chin down against her chest, and lean her head heavily against me - the closest to an "I surrender" posture she'd ever take.

After investing all that time into her, I wanted to adopt her, but it was just before a paycheque and I was short the cash for the adoption fee, so when her kittens went back to the shelter she had to return too. The very next day, I got a call from the foster coodinator - she'd attacked and bitten a technician. Did I still want her? If not, she was now officially declared "unadoptable" due to her violence and would have to be put down...if I was still willing to take her, she was mine, free of charge. An hour later I was bringing her home

These days she's a great fat lazy sloth of a lap cat. I still can't scratch her tummy, and she takes exception to be handled near her lower bank (a kink at the base of her tail indicative of on old, unset break would seem to provide reason for this particular foible), but other then that she's a big sweetie.

And then there's the cat that got away...

It was the only time I fostered a cat due to injuries it had taken rather then because it was a mother with kittens. Her story was heartbreaking...she had a flea bite allergy, and her original owner hadn't bothered keeping her free of fleas. The resulting itchiness made her lick herself bald. One evening, in a fit of rage at her flea-covered, naked-skinned state, he threw her against a wall, shattering her jaw, fracturing her left cheekbone, and damaging her left eye.

The Humane Society was called in and took her away. They did surgery to wire her jaw back together, and treated her to kill the fleas. When I picker her up and brought her home, she was still groggy from the anesthetic, her jaw was wired shut with a bit of plastic tube sticking out of the skin so it would drain, and except for her head, paws, and a tuft at the end of her tail, she was naked.

The very first thing she did after I took her out of the carrier was look me right in the face with these gorgeous green eyes and start a deep, rumbling purr, then rub her head against my hand to have her ears scratched.

Because of her jaw being wired, she had to be hand-fed at regular intervals, which involved taking a needle-less syringe and squirting soft food into her mouth. She also had to be bathed every couple of days to finish killing off the fleas, and given a liquid antibiotic to prevent infection. She LOVED being bathed, and would sit quietly in the tub while I poured water over her, lathered her up, and rinsed her off.

With the fleas gone, her fur began to grow back. She quickly turned from a scrawny, ugly beast into a lithe, long-haired tortoiseshell cat. She was gorgeous! This ignored and abused cat was the sweetest feline it has ever been my priviledge to meet.

I so wanted to adopt her as well, but I had just adopted the "overprotective mother" described earlier, and couldn't afford a fourth cat. With regret, I returned her to the humane society. I never was able to find out if she was subsequently adopted, as her paperwork wasn't correctly followed up on...I just hope this sweet, loving, beautiful cat found a home worthy of her.