For a long time we were a normal household with a normal number of cats. But back in about 2009 or 2010 we began the journey that resulted in a slow slide into being identified as crazy cat people.
For us feeding the cats that hung around the yard looking hungry was the start of it all. When I noticed a skinny black cat with a too tight collar hanging around the back yard, I did what any sane, kind, person would do and opened a can of cat food and set it out for the stray kitty. That kitty seemed uninterested in the food so I left it there in case my presence was keeping her from eating. She was obviously not as hungry as I thought as she trotted off. But a few minutes later there was an even thinner calico cat wolfing down the food as if she’d never seen food before. “Callie” as she came to be called turned up at our house daily and I fed her daily. She was so unbearably thin that the few times she didn’t show up I worried she’d died from starvation because she never did gain any weight.
Soon Callie was joined by a black and white cat that was thin but not as thin as Callie. I fed her too. Gradually the cats brought more friends until there were about 8 eating daily at the back door.
I’m not sure why we didn’t think about the genders of the cats, or the fact that at least some of them were bound to be female. Maybe it was because the first two were so unbelievably thin…or maybe it was that they “weren’t really our cats – we were just feeding them.” Or maybe it was just naivety on our parts…but neither of us otherwise generally smart people stopped to consider the potential of offspring.
The idea of offspring never crossed my mind till one morning in early spring when my husband woke me at 5 AM excited about something on the back porch. I assumed, wrongly, that he had seen the possum that I had seen eating from the cat dishes on other occasions. I was kind of ho hum but he was so eager to show me what was on the back porch that I couldn’t crush his enthusiasm and drug my bones from the bed and trundled downstairs where I looked out the sliding glass door. “Callie” had become “Mama Callie” and had brought her little family of four, five or six week old, kittens to our porch for breakfast. Within minutes our kitty family had grown from three inside cats, the original two outdoor feral cats plus their seven or eight friends, to include the new babies, bringing our total to about 16 or 17.
Later that day I looked out the window and saw two black and white kittens playing around the drainage ditch. A day or two later their mom (the black and white one that first came with Callie) brought the two black and white kittens and their three black siblings to eat at the backdoor.
If you find yourself naming the feral cats you feed, be careful! You’re well on your way to becoming a crazy cat person. Once you name a cat it becomes yours – as much as you ever own a cat. Maybe it’s more that once you name a cat, you become its human. In any case, the end result is the same.
If you’ve forgotten family planning at any point above, get cats spayed and neutered – as soon as you can or your descent into Crazy Catdom will be much faster.
As soon as we discovered our shortsightedness in not thinking about the kitties being unspayed and unneutered we set about rectifying that. In Indiana where we lived at the time there was a great spay/neuter program where anyone could take their cats and dogs to be spayed or neutered for $20. For an additional $5 or $10 you could have them vaccinated too.
Since ours were still feral it took some time to work our way through the ranks, live trapping one or two a week until we got everyone “fixed” and vaccinated. We managed to get it done and didn’t have any enlargement of the colony due to poor family planning.
The place where we took the cats to get spayed and neutered required that they have a name. Psychologically, that played a role in the connection between us and the cats. Callie Kitten who looked like Mama Callie wasn’t just the calico kitten, she had a name. The little black and white runt kitten wasn’t just the little back and white one, he was Ozzie.
Sometime during that time, we began to think of them as ours…and so when my husband had a chance to retire early and we wanted to move to Iowa, closer to family, we decided to move the whole kitten kaboodle with us. We ended up moving 20 cats. We drive a Toyota Carolla, so we rented an SUV, bought 20 cat carriers, and enlisted the help of my dad with his van and my niece with her car to help us move the cats to the new house.
The cats lived the first few months in the basement in a cat habitat that my mother built for them. It had perches up high, and boxes on shelves, and places for them to climb and lurk and it worked well as a place for them to get used to the sounds of the house while we were remodeling upstairs and workmen were in and out.
The cats grew tamer while they were in the basement. By the time the remodeling was complete, and we were ready to open the door and let them upstairs, most of them had advanced to greeting me when I came to feed and to letting me pet them while they ate. Some even sat on my lap when I was in the basement.
Thirteen years have passed since we loaded up our vehicles (and everyone else’s) and moved to Iowa. A few of the original cats have passed on. Mama Kat and Mama Callie have both passed away. But Callie Kitten and Ozzie and most of the others are still going strong.
Like the crazy cat people that we are, we’ve added a few new ones to our mix as some of the older ones have passed away.
Our great niece and great nephew came to live with us a year or two ago, and of course, they wanted kitties of their own, so we have the kitties they picked out, and then someone on Facebook had a litter of newborn baby kittens that they didn’t know how to care for and we took those and did our best to save them. The kids’ cat Fang came here to live when their mom moved to a place that didn’t allow pets…so we’re definitely not in danger of losing our status as crazy cat people.
The slide into crazy catdom can happen to anyone. But we’re happy it happened to us. We love our kitties.
It’s time for something the cats are thankful for. Ozzie is thankful I’m busy quilting again. He loves to hang out on my sewing table. Callie Kitten is thankful to be over the bit of a cold she had last week.
I’m linking up today with The Thankful Thursday Blog Hop and Wordless Wednesday
We’re doing that with an outside kitty that has adopted us. Her name is Lil’ Bit and we’re working on getting her inside.
Cats rock.
Thank you for joining the Wordless Wednesday Blog Hop.
Have a fabulous day and weekend. ♥
Thank you for dropping by to say hello, Sandee. We have a kitty named Little Bit too. Ours is a black kitten that we were supposed to keep for a friend of my great niece until they moved. Long story short, they moved and left Little Bit. We were okay with that because by then we were attached to her.
I hope you’ll be able to get your Lil’ Bit inside before the weather turns cold where you are. I have heard a lot of people say that feral cats are unhappy inside and that they always remain feral, and a lot of other things that haven’t proven to be true with ours. Our former ferals have never tried to get out or even acted like they would like to go outside.
I enjoyed the Wordless Wednesday Blog Hop. I’ll be back for sure. 🙂
You have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend..
How very wonderful. Thanks for helping them out. Your story sounds so much like ours. At one point we had 9 inside kitties and about 20 ferals. We now have 5 inside and about 10 outside, many of the outside have been here 10+ years now. Thanks for joining Angel Brian’s Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!
One would think that we were the ones helping the cats out…but the thing is…once they become yours they are your family and you wouldn’t take anything for them. It sounds like you have had quite a few inside kitties at once. We currently have 16. Most of ours have been here since before we moved here, but we have added a few new ones as we’ve lost some of the older ones.
I enjoyed my visit to your site and enjoyed participating in the blog hop.
God bless you for all the cats you recued. We ended up with most of our cats from ones that were dropped off and I have 4 ferals. I hope they will someday be as friendly as yours ended up being. I kept them inside after getting them fixed, but 2 years later, I still can’t touch them, but they will be in the same room with us.
Hi Ellen,
It sounds like you’ve done your share of rescuing too. Do you know the cat blink? The Cat Daddy (Jackson Galaxy) from My Cat From Hell is a great believer in it. I have used it with our cats and it seems to help. You take off your glasses if you wear glasses, soften your gaze and blink very slowly while looking softly at the cat. You can do this multiple times. What you want is for the cat to blink back at you. That’s supposed to symbolize a bond between you and the kitty. It does seem to work, especially if you do it often.
I think ours were abandoned when their families moved from the apartments behind us. The two moms were pretty wild and taught their babies to be wild.
Having them content to be in the same room with you is progress. I’ve found canned food…even a single can divided among all the kitties is a great inducer of interaction. The cats will generally come closer for canned food than they will for anything else.
Play is also a great way of building interaction. You can use a laser light or my favorite cat toy – Da Bird. Even cats that don’t play will generally play with Da Bird. The way the feathers are mounted in the toy part when you swish it in the air it makes a sound like a bird flapping and it drives the cats bonkers.