Feral Cat Behavior

I have a friend that I have known for many years. She called me the other day and as soon as I heard her voice, I knew her world had collapsed. All she said for me to know this, was “Hi there it’s me.”

She never calls me unless she just can’t take life anymore. Perhaps this precedent was set over thirty years ago when her first marriage was failing. No one was there for her, we had been staying in the same hotel working the same canvas and so I helped her through the really rough times. Better than drinking I suppose? Of course back then, we did our fair share of drinking with the “boys” after work. A way to cut loose and relieve the stress of being away from home, being bored in a hotel room, and having to deal with salespeople and train them.

There was a cool place in San Diego that served Rocky Burgers. Big juicy tasty hamburgs, cold beer, twisty fries and cheesecake to die for. We partied on weekends, stayed in a hot pink condo in Palm Springs, flirted with married men and just had a blast.

But recently, the world has been tough for my friend. She is having problems coping and in her confusion she turns to me. I can’t make it right, and sometimes when trying, I say the wrong things. Then she gets angry and lashes out at me for speaking as I did. Even if I give her fear a voice, say what I know to be on her mind, it convicts her and she ends up hanging up on me.

I can understand her pain, I have lived in the darkness in the past. I understand her confusion and her fears. Perhaps I understand to much. When you have lived as I have, walked the path I was destined to walk back when I was a naive 20 year old, you grow old quite quickly. My dear friend Phil tells me every so often that he is amazed I am still standing.

I grieve for my friend, for her situation that once again confronts her. Everything for her is life-changing, nothing is simple. She is lonely, she is ill and she is scared. I guess, the bottom line is, I would like to hear from her when her life isn’t dark. I would like to celebrate when she walks in the light.

Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic today on the way to Portland, I noticed on the center meridian a cat! It was gray and white, looked really scraggly. There were trees and bushes for protection, and there wasn’t anyway we could get over and park and let me see if I could catch it. It looked so scared, and how it made it across the freeway to get to the middle is beyond me. I tried to get Mike to double back but there had been an accident on the curve and he couldn’t do it.

I know it says that God looks out after the tiniest sparrow. I hope that includes one very frightened kitty on I-5-

Received a phone call this morning from my vet’s office. All the local animal shelters are full up and there are at least 12 kittens that need homes and have nowhere to go. I have seventeen right now. There is no possible way I can open up my home to any more. I did tell the gal that I can take bottle babies. They are easy to isolate from the rest of the group without conflict and they adopt out faster than grown cats.

All I can say is SPAY AND NEUTER!

The following email was passed to me by a good friend. Because Mike and I recently found what we believe to be Cleo’s remains in the woods behind the house, this woman’s project really hit me in my heart.

I share it now on my blog with the hope that those who are reading might be inspired to do something similar in their home turf to call attention to the needless slaughter of shelter animals-

I am working on a project to bring awareness to the people of our town about what happens to the animals at our shelter.

I am using “art” to educate the people of Brigham City Utah (a very small town) about what is happing at our shelter. I am tying it into Utah’s week for the animals (October 15-21).

I am putting “flags” in on the lawn of our shelter to represent each animal that came through the door in 2005 and what happened to them. I am using 8×11 scrapbook paper that will be attached to 3 foot long wood dowels.

There were 1012 animals that came in to the shelter
638 were destroyed
235 were claimed by owner
132 were adopted/rescued
7 died or were doa

The flags will be arranged on the lawn of our animal shelter in sections. I.E. all the killed (white) in one. All the Adopted/rescued (yellow) in another. And all of the claimed (red) in another. There will be a vinyl banner on the
shelter with all of the total numbers spelled out, and then a vinyl banner in front of each section with that number as well.
My flags (killed) will have stupid breeding reasons, relinquishment reasons, photos of shelter pets killed in 2006, graphic shelter euthanasia photos, pictures of letters that people left with the pets at the shelter, pictures of registration AKC papers of pets that were left and anything else that might move someone in some way.

Some of the happy flags (claimed or adopted/rescued) are being done by children-teens and I am pasting them together.

I am leaving room for walking between rows. My hope is that the parents of the children will come down and look for their Childs artwork-story-poem and then walk through the other flags out of curiosity. And hopefully they will
finally “get it”.

I am hoping if it all goes well and the weather cooperates that after the time is up the flags can be removed from the poles and put into a binder for later viewing.

The shelter and I are also going to increase adoption hours (currently they are open only 1 hour a day) during that week and I am hoping to get every animal at that shelter adopted during that week.

It is a weird idea I know but I really hope it makes people think. I am still working on all of the flags and have made myself a goal to have it all done by the 8th of October so all I have to do is worry about the weather.

I need your help. Allot of help actually. I am trying to make every flag count. I want each one to say something to someone. I have put up poems and stories and pictures and graphic pictures and funny sayings (on the “happy” flags) and I am running out of ideas.

If each one of you who receives this e-mail will send me a picture of an animal that you lost (you in rescue know what I am talking about the one you could not save because they were to far gone or you were to full..) and a story or a poem or details I can print it out on my computer to put on the flag.

If you do not rescue but have loved an animal and would like a memorial flag added to this important event, (or if you do do rescue and there is a happy adoption that you will never forget) please send me a picture and story or a poem or what ever for the “happy flags”

If you do not want your name on the flag that is ok just let me know. I think it would be great for everyone who sees the project to know that the world cares!

Please forward and cross post to the people you think will help.

Thanks for reading this novel (c:
Phylene Anderson
Brigham City Utah
artforlife@xmission.com

This is now day #23 of no Cleo sightings. I have to face the fact that something happened to this beautiful manx-cross and after fourteen years of living with us, he is gone now. I have stopped putting out food at night, I stopped a few days ago, knowing that if he was coming out here at night, his meows of hunger would instantly wake me up and I could see if he was okay.

There have been cougar tracks down at the creek, so that is another sad possibility because if he did run off into the puckerbrush, he could have met the cougar.

I don’t know what happened to him, just that something has, and this is the hardest part about working with feral cats. Sometimes, they just vanish and you don’t know what happened. Not knowing is the worst. I wish he had just come home and we had found him lying out in the grass. Now, I sit here with tears in my eyes, wondering if he is hurt, where he is, is he scared? Is he just gone? Life sometimes doesn’t make sense.

Been working on the horse barn today. Put up the back doors, so now I can drive the tractor into the stalls and dump hay or clean the stalls with the machine. That will help save my shoulder a lot.

God, please bring our Cleo back home. I miss him so much, even his over-the-top raspy meow.

Guinevere now has a new cave set-up in the bedroom. She has been getting a bit nervous lately. Our neighbor across the way has just purchased a wolf hybrid. Sadly, this dog is left on a chain all day and all night. He likes to howl his discontent to the world. The howls are unnerving for me, I can imagine how Gwennie feels. I want to just run across the road and free the poor dog, but I can’t.

So instead, I took one of my cat condo units I have and broke it down into a basic beginnner structure. I put one of the pseudo fur houses at the bottom of the condo and secured it in place. Gwennie likes it in there, it is soft on her bones, and dark enough for her to feel secure. Plus the house is deep enough to insulate her against wolf-dog’s howls.

You can find the condo I am referring to if you click this line of text:

Thanks to the efforts of Neil at SpoilMyKitty.com the pet stairs are turning into a real blessing. Each night now, she climbs up the stairs (awkwardly) and snuggles into my arms for the night. Her purr motor is fully engaged and I go to sleep with her safe in my arms. If I get up at night, she clambers down the stairs and then back up when I come back to bed. It makes me cry, the trust of this cat who was treated so poorly by one individual.

Today will make 15 days since I have last seen my manx-cross Cleo. In that time frame major changes have taken place in the location he felt was his home. The barn that he hid in, has been bulldozed to the ground, the wellhouse torn down and workers have been crawling underneath the house as the new owner makes his entrance.

I went over yesterday to talk to the new owner about the cat that called his place home. He said that if he goes underneath the house and sees Cleo he will pull him out. Yeah right! He won’t even get a chance to get close.

I have made myself hoarse with my kitty call but the fields that used to be his playground is now occupied by mules and goats. I am afraid we have lost him for good. I can only pray that he had the good fortune of leaving on his own, and his body isn’t lying underneath the latest pile of rubble.

It was just a small spit as the clouds passed on the way over the mountains but it was still snow.

The cats are nuts right now with the change in the weather happening so suddenly. The wind was really blowing and it was quite cold. We will be putting up the outside barriers for the enclosure tomorrow so that there will be windbreaks for the cats. I decided this time, to just tie up some tarps on the sides versus wrapping the whole thing in plastic and then nailing it all down so that it stays. I think my tarp idea is better and much easier to tear down in the summertime.

I saw two of my past bottle babies today. It was so nice to see Scuba and Sonic, I do miss them so much. I wonder about Massey as well. I haven’t heard from her owner in such a long time. I just hope the Massey is still being loved and looked after. That was the strangest thing to have someone travel all the way from Canada to adopt Massey. It isn’t like I can just pop over and check on her progress.

I haven’t blogged because I have been on deadline for print articles. Two articles will be coming out soon in Cat Fancy and I have the opportunity to educate the public in a cat article featured in a non-cat magazine back east!

I have also had some major life changes lately, but then who hasn’t. Death is a strange creature, and once it hits someone special, you have time to reflect, evaluate and take stock of your own life. I am no longer a part of a website that I helped to cultivate for over four years, and almost like a death, I feel a sense of loss. But there is also a great relief from being lifted from the burden that surrounded the running of the site. With better doors of opportunity opening up around me, I feel lighter in my soul.

I took Leah for a really long walk today in the forest. We were out over 2 hours. A clear-your-head type of walk, a mental inventory of what is important, a review of personal values and a time of goal making. No critters disturbed us except for a large bird of prey. All the deer have scattered because it is open season for them with compound bow hunters. I hate hunting season. Very few of the men tracking these gorgeous animals need the meat to “survive.” A macho game among men, one that I wish they would abolish.

The fire is still raging near us. The hope is the flames won’t jump the lake and threaten the other side of town. I wanted to wack some weeds this morning, but I feared running the equipment, as dry as the ground is one spark could be fatal.

I managed to also spend time with the horses. Boy are they gorgeous boys. Racer has grown so big and his big brown eyes are still so trusting. Even after all the crud we put him through during his founder episodes, he is still bonded to me like no other creature ever has been. I miss our walks in the woods but I dare not take him out. His coffin bone is still rotated and it could slip even under the best of circumstances. So now he is a pasture pet and I don’t spend near enough time with him like I used to.