Stray cats

Regular readers here (all three of you.. lol) will notice that I now have a new blog category listed on the sidebar. Cats.

We live out in the woods, on a dead end road that winds around a lake bordered with cabins and summer homes. Our area seems to be a dumping ground for unwanted pets. Now, we already have dogs and one cat, and one day several months ago, on a cold winter day, one cruel and heartless person dumped a litter of kittens on the side of the road near our house. From a distance, the cats looked to be just a few months old.. but, they were feral and we only caught glimpses of the three every now and then. There was a pretty solid yellow one (very light buttery yellow color), one with solid black fur except for a tiny white spot between his two front legs, and a gray and white one.

Over the next few months, we put food out for them.. and although we rarely saw any of them, the food sometimes disappeared. In the spring, we started seeing the gray striped one most every day near our backyard. We put out a bowl of food every day, and slowly, slowly, the cat would get a little closer to us– always to get to the food bowl. This cat was the only one we saw this past spring, and sadly, we assumed the other two must not have made it through the winter.

One stray cat..

She (you knew she was a SHE, right?) began to laze around on the back deck, almost as if she lived here.. lol Of course, we kept feeding her, even though she wouldn’t let us get anywhere near her. We made sure she had a bowl of food and water all the time though, hoping that eventually she would get used to us.

Well.. this one stray cat resulted in two of these:

Meet Bonnie and Molly, born under our back porch sometime around mid to late April: (all thumbnails are clickable for larger photos)

These two have resulted in this:

…our back porch is now filled with cat condos, cat beds, and various fuzzy things, things with strings, things with bells, things with catnip, things hanging from the rails, a scratching post, and other various toys for them to amuse themselves with.

The mother cat still won’t let us near her, but she’s not as scared of us as she used to be. Now, we knew that if she had one litter, she would soon have another. So, we bought a hav-a-heart trap and hubby finally caught her (it wasn’t easy, and that’s another story). We immediately took her to the vet for her shots and to have her spayed. No one in the vet’s office could get near her either, so the doc gave her a shot through the cage, and then did the surgery. After a complete exam the vet said she was as healthy as can be, negative for feline leukemia, and he gave her all her shots. Hubby picked her up the next day, and when he went in to get her, the vet asked what her name is. Well, we hadn’t ever given her a name, heck, we had never even touched her. So hubby said “we’ve just been calling her the mama kitty”.. so “Mama-Kitty” became her name, and is what’s written on all the paperwork from the vet’s office… lol

We also caught the two kittens in that same trap and had all their kitten shots the day after Mama-Kitty was spayed. Both of them are female (of COURSE), so now they will have to be spayed too. The vet said that they would be old enough for that sometime in October. Now, none of these three cats are completely feral anymore, but they’re not completely tame either. Mama-Kitty still won’t let me touch her, although she will laze about on the porch when I’m out there, and I can walk near her and even take photos of her and she won’t run.. but when I reach to touch her, zoom, she’s gone. Her and her babies love to lie around on the back deck.

Here’s a pic of all three of them, enjoying a plate of mac and cheese. Yes, they love macaroni and cheese. lol They also love tuna and kitten chow. Check out the gorgeous dark striped fur on Molly. She’s a beautiful little cat, and is so sweet and shy. She loves to bite at strings.

One of the kittens, Bonnie, is somewhat more tame than the others. She’s a sweet little doll kitten , and I’ve caught her several times, mostly when I’ve been playing with her with a string, she gets close, and sometimes I can just reach out and grab her. She doesn’t scratch, and she will allow me to hold her and to pet her, and I’ve kept her in the house for several hours at a time. I always think I’m making good progress, she will sleep in my lap and even purr sometimes. After an hour or two of being inside though, she will start crying and getting wiggly and so then when I put her back out with Mama-Kitty and her little sister Molly, she takes her cue from them I suppose, and runs from me again. She’s getting a little better though, she will almost let me touch her now without trying to run away. :)

Her sister Molly is much more shy. We kept both of them in the house overnight when the mother was being spayed, and I handled both of them for hours. Since then, I haven’t been able to catch Molly again and I was afraid she was going to be as wild as the mother cat. But, lately she has crept closer and closer to me on the porch.. usually batting after something I tie to a string. All three of them will now run to the food bowl after I fill it, without waiting until I’m back in the house; and the kittens will come up to the sliding glass doors and bat at my hands and hair, through the glass.. but still, they just won’t willingly come to me yet. I’m hopeful that all of these cats, especially the little ones, will eventually be tame.

Even a little feral, they still look happy, don’t they? lol

Oh, and by the way, a few nights ago I had just put a bowl of food out for them and came back in the house, and a little while later, I looked out on the back porch to check on them. The two kittens and mama-kitty were eating.. and a big black cat with a tiny white spot between his front legs was also eating right alongside them. And yesterday, hubby was out behind the house doing something and said he glimpsed a big buttery yellow cat up in the woods… Hubby says he is calling the black one Zorro. Anybody got any ideas for a name for a big yellow cat? lol

I don’t think they’re stray cats anymore.

Related post:
Bonnie & Molly get spayed