How did we go from having 1 cat in the house to 11 – in less
than a month? Our house is now over run with 10 new faces – all tabby in
various shades of grey. Our lone whitester is feeling outnumbered – and is
wondering what happened to those quiet retirement years he was looking forward
to as the only king of the castle.
So let us start at the beginning…..
It started 3 years ago when we kept seeing a white cat with
tabby markings showing up at our front step the occasional evening. She looked hungry so we put a little dry food
out for her. For several months, we would see that the food had disappeared
overnight and we would catch glimpses of her coming and going. We would try to get close but she was wary of
us and would back away. We assumed that she was either an underfed house cat or
she was a stray.
The following summer we saw more of her – she seemed more
hungry than usual. It was not long after
thus that we started to see two additional young cats coming through our yard
at various times. One looked very much like Mama cat so we assumed these were
her kittens. One was mainly tabby with some white markings, longer fur and
beautiful green eyes. It was braver and
would come closer to the front step when it thought there would be food. We
called it Sabi (from Sabrina the witch who had green eyes…and silly as it
seems, Sabi the Tabby seemed a suitable call name). The other young cat had long black fur with a
goofy white patch on its face so that one became Cricket.
As fall closed in we saw more of the young cats and less of
Mama Cat. My hubby decided to build a cat shelter in our back yard so the young
cats would have a warm place in winter. At this point we knew Mama Cat and
these young ones were strays. As we
spoke to other neighbours we found out there were more cats roaming the
neighbourhood who did not seem to belong to anyone. Being at the end of the
city, right by the highway, there is a good chance some of these cats were
simply dumped off at the approach to the highway.
Then one day we saw
Sabi accompanied by several kittens. We
made sure there was always food left at night time and would often see one, two
or three kittens playing around our truck or under the large Colorado spruce in
the front yard. We thought there were
about four kittens altogether. Our
neighbour was able to entice one kitty inside so they adopted her. Two kitties stayed in the general vicinity of
our house and throughout the winter we would open a door and see two tabbies
waiting for food. To distinguish them we
decided to call one “Chair kitty” since it was always sitting on one of the chairs
on our front step and the other one was “Hisser” since anytime we even took a
step towards it, it would hiss loudly. We assume Chair Kitty was a she, given
her timidity and Hisser was a he, given his attitude towards us.
With a cold winter in play, we decided to purchase a heated
kitty house for the front of the house.
Chair kitty had disappeared but Hisser was a regular visitor and was getting
more comfortable with us so we wanted to make sure he had an option if it
became too cold wherever he spent the night.
Hisser decided that the heated house was just right for him and he took
up residence there. He seemed content with the circumstances and he would even
let us pat him under the chin every once in awhile.
Fast forward to spring.
Hisser was looking surprisingly fat for a feral cat. It turns out Hisser
was a she and pregnant. She would appear at the front door early mornings and
evening, wolfing down any wet food we would bring out to her. We quickly renamed her to Mama Kitty to
reflect her new role.
Two and a half months later, in summer, we spotted her walking
along the back retaining wall, with a kitten in her mouth. Once she deposited
the kitten in a safe spot in the back yard, she brought two more.
Out the back window, we would see the little kittens jumping
up on the concrete sidewalk blocks and trying to climb up the poplar tree. We couldn’t get close to them but we could certainly
see the exuberance of kitten youthfulness when we retreated to a safe
distance.
As they grew to about three months they became braver and would
come to the front door with Mama Kitty to be fed alongside her. The largest of
the three kittens was a soft grey classic tabby (mottled markings like a marble
cake). The other two had the mackerel
tabby stripes in a darker color. For ease of identification, the grey one became
Smokie. The other two were named for their personalities, Braveheart and
Scaredy Cat.
At that time, we did find out what happened to Chair Kitty. He,
not she, became a beloved pet in the house right behind us. He had escaped and
his owner climbed over our fence looking for him! All ended well and he was
back in his home within a day.
Back to our story….
We decided we would try to capture the three kittens and
look for homes for them. They were more
friendly than any of the ferals we had been feeding so we anticipated that it would
be easier to socialize them for moving to a loving family. Mama kitty seemed
comfortable outside so we weren’t looking to change her situation.
Once we made that decision we quickly realized we had to
change course. Mama kitty was looking suspiciously
chubby and we realized she was pregnant again.
Doing the math we realized her brood would be born at the beginning of winter,
which meant they would only be a few weeks old when the snow came. The plan now
became to capture all four.
The first step of the capture happened more by chance than by
design. Hubby had opened the back patio door to look out at the bird feeder
when Smokie and Braveheart simply walked inside. Hubby shut the door right away and the
capture commenced. Smokie was the easiest since I picked him up and took him to
his new bedroom upstairs. Braveheart did
not come so easily. She scratched wildly
when picked up and then she ran under the stereo unit. It took a day of hubby cajoling her out with
a cat toy before he was able to get her in a box and bring her upstairs to her
brother.
Mama Kitty was next.
We put some food inside the front door and she willingly came in. However,
once I closed the door she realized something was up and she did her best to
escape. Fortunately I was able to grab
her when she started to climb up the coats on the coat rack and she was quickly
moved up to her own bedroom.
One kitten left to
go. We had a couple of failed attempts trying
to capture Scaredy cat. At night we would hear her plaintive meows, calling out
for her siblings. We could see her sitting
at the end of the yard looking for her family.
On the third night, hubby went out to the store to buy a variety of toys
that he thought might persuade her to come in. Surprisingly, the winner was the
laser pointer. In she came. We thought
we would have a difficult time once she was in but she stayed hunched against the
wall, so hubby easily picked her up and took her to reunite with her siblings.
Oh yes….three weeks later Mama Kitty had six kittens and
that is how we became a household with eleven felines.
