For The Love of Strays

her story



his story

~~~~~~~~

ehbeth, those are two beautiful dogs -- and two great stories. I'm so glad you rescued Cleo and Bailey.

I think you can't go wrong with helping animals.

I've picked up a number of stray cats over the years, but have been unable to keep them due to my allergies. I usually hang onto them long enough to get them medically stable, have them spayed/neutered, and then find them a home.

My favourite was an older Siamese lady - Twiggy Goodwill. The vet said she was about 9 years old. She was tiny and lively - and went on to live a very happy life after we found her tucked under our porch, scared and hungry.

My best friend has rescue dogs, cats AND horses ! on her farm.

Back when the earth was much younger. . . .

Barney's a big cat now.

Wow, even horses!

I've been thinking about getting a pet next year, and I'm thinking about going to a shelter to get one.

There are so many fuzzy bundles of love that need a good home!

Well thanks for the mention, I have an even better story than the one abuout Jezzer to start us off.

It was years back, when I was living in a trailer in the middle of 5 acres of palmetto bushes and slash pines (insert vomity emoticon) Everyone had 5 acres, with a disaster of a trailer on it.

Anyway, I was going for a walk down our dirt road, and out popped a little kitten, crying so mournfully. I knew she'd probably just been dumped there, who knows how long ago, it this awful heat and dryness.

I didn't want to pick her up, because truthfully, it was so nasty in that area who knows what disease she could have picked up, and I didn't want to bring any bugs back to my 2 girls.

I started walking back, about half a mile, and this little kitten gamely kept up. I was thinking she'd just stop or go back into the bushes. But nope, she had some heart. Once I got a little too far ahead, and I couldn't bear her crying out for me to wait.

Anyway, she managed to get back with me, and she looked exhausted. I ran inside and got some water and a can of cat food.

The way she attacked the food, I don't think she would have lasted very long out there. Then, as soon as she sucked it all down, it all came back out the other end. I remember hearing this happening to people who'd been in concentration camps.

I thought, "Oh no, she's sick, after all that, she probably won't make it."

Wrong. I fed her again and it stayed down, for the next few days all she did was eat. I started calling her Pocahantus because she had been so brave. I couldn't let her inside, my girls wouldn't have stood for that.

After a couple of weeks, she was the ruler of the front yard. My ex-husband and I were going to be driving to Miami that weekend, and he said let's take her down there and give her to his sister. She already had a couple of cats, but was the type to always want someone new to take car of.

I was worried pocahantus would freak in the car, piss, puke, all that. But within 15 minutes she settled down and slept most of the way.

Anyway, maybe 6 or 9 months later, we went to visit his sister again, and WOW! pocahantus had been re-christened poca, since she had been so small.

Now, she was the largest of the cats, and clearly the one in charge. Healthy, sassy and sleek, she was a very lucky girl.

Barney? Did she turn out to be a male cat, roger?

I've often wondered about the challenges of adopting a ferral kitten. They must be kind of hard to handle at first -- but I bet they love having a family, food, and a warm home once they get adjusted to it!

That's a great story, Chai! Hurrah for Pocahantas!

Yeah, that would've killed me if I'd heard her crying for me to wait. What a brave little cat she was. She had spunk! (I think most strays do!)

Buffy kitty! One day during a volleyball game in highschool, a scrawny kitten wandered onto the court and adopted me. She wouldn't take "no" for an answer and followed me home (with a lot of coaxing). The family fell in love with her.

When I left home, she moved to Texas with my dad and lived a very long time, I think she was close to 20 years old when she died. She had the cutest mannerisms. She didn't just rub her face on you, she rubbed her entire body and it wasn't a rub, it was more like a body slam.


Looking at this picture of her makes me miss Buffy all over again. She was a keeper.

Yep. Barney's a dude. He took to the house cat life instantly.

*schniff* I'm a sucker for these stories.

I know I've written about Gracie before, I just can't remember where. Three years ago next month, we were having a bitterly cold winter -- temperatures in the -20's and a windchill factor driving it lower. But on a bright Saturday, I came home from grocery shopping to see a little ball of fluff on a mulch pile in my driveway. I hadn't got around to spreading the mulch before the weather turned that year. But mulch, being what it is, produces its own heat, especially with the help of some sunshine. Even in the bitter cold, it was gently steaming and the ball of fluff was snuggled up in it.

It took me the rest of the day to capture her, but I could not leave her outside -- never mind that she had already been outside for some time. When I got her inside (to the chagrin of old ginger tabby MacDuff), I discovered that someone had tried to cut her tail off and had only half succeeded. She was happy and playful, had a purr that could fill a room, and had this dreadful thing dangling. I took her to the vet and paid for the surgery. I put up notices around the neighbourhood -- first to try & find her owners and, when that failed, to try for new owners. Several months passed. She went into heat early, so I rushed back to the vet and had her spayed.

That was my first, and hopefully last, experience with a cat in heat. The vet could've charged me anything -- I would've paid gladly.

I tried not to name her. You know the powerful pull of naming -- it's claiming ownership, each for the other. I tried not to do it, but fell into the habit of "Say g'night, Gracie" at the end of our days together.

By this time, it was dawning on me that nobody was going to take her. Then came the news that the Humane Society had to euthanize hundreds of their cats because there were too many. I couldn't send her there. And she kept purring! She purred whenever I talked -- to her, to MacDuff, on the telephone. She purred when she played with her toys. She purred when she ate. Purring, purring, purring!

(They say that we humans respond to purring so positively because it's identical to the sounds of the womb.)

But MacDuff was growling. He didn't like her from the start, and especially not when she began using his head to play leapfrog. Paticularly not when she leapfrogged from his head while he seriously addressed his food bowl. And certainly not when she tripped him up, streaking past while he went about his daily business.

What's a logical person to do? Not what I did -- went to a no-kill rescue shelter and "borrowed" a third cat to see what would happen. And what happened was magic -- Babu, runt, scaredy-cat, vanishing artist, turned out to be the perfect mediator between MacDuff and Gracie.

And peace came to my little kingdom.

Purring is a survival trait, and the answer is always "one more cat", isn't it?

I took in a stray turtle one time. Looked like this...



He just appeared in my yard one day. Usually the turtles stay down by the swamp, but this little feller, for whatever reason, decided to venture near the house.

I remember letting him wonder around on my back patio. One day I put a cigarette in its mouth, unlit, and the little guy bit down on the cigarette which caused it to protrude upward at a slight angle, and then he proceeded to walk around looking like a little dignified Englishman.

That visage inspired me to name him Winston.

I had him for several weeks before a passing hawk swooped down and picked him up. Then, as I watched, horrified, the hawk circled above the rock pile and let Winston drop.

Winston hit one of the larger rocks and exploded into a hundred fragments. The hawk flew down and had most of the tender morsels, then flew away.

By the time I got down there to examine the damage the rest of the pieces had been carried off by various scavengers and the only remaining things were Winston's head and a small section of his tail. Plus a few fragments of shell, but I left them behind.

I took the head and tail section back to the house and placed them in a freezer bag and then tucked the bag into a back corner of the freezer, behind an extra Thanksgiving turkey that's been sitting in there for a couple years. (I really should cook that turkey one of these years)

Anyway, Winston's head and tail are still in there and one of these days I'll take them out and try to figure some way to preserve them and save them for posterity, but until then, they shall remain.

That's my stray story. I have others, but right now, I don't have the time to relay them.

I have a million stray stories but a few are notable.

There was Punk who my sister found walking home from Jr. High school. Punk lived for another 25 years. She jumped onto my mom's bed one Halloween night, uttered a final "rrrrroooooowwwwrrrrr" and fell over dead.

There was Z, a beautiful fuzzy ball Siamese type thing that was left locked in an abandoned house. I would hear her crying as I walked home from work. After a few days I realized nobody was coming back and broke in to get her. She lived with me for a long time and with my mom for a long time, probably about 15 years before she died.

Bully, a dilapidated tabby, was found by someone who carried her into the bar where I was working. We gave her turkey and cream and she lived with me forever. She died about two years ago at 19.

Right now there is Biscuit. She was a meth lab cat rescued by a woman who worked for our vet when the meth lab was busted. They knew at the vet that my last old cat had died a few month back so they hit me up with this lovely beast. She's been here for a little more than a year and she is just wonderful.

I currently feed an array of about six abandoned cats. Beautiful things but now feral.

I'm a big beliver of taking in strays.

My avatar has two adoptees. Pacco, my dog, who is seen humping Sally sideways, poor guy, was found walking highway 101 in northern California in 2001.
Sally was adopted by Diane and Dys, and I don't know if they know any more than that. Pacco is several times Sally's age.

I had a feral - or sort of feral - cat in Los Angeles. I called him Schoolcat. I scoured the neighborhood the day I drove away, but couldn't find him. He had many other Keepers.. but still, if I'd have found him, he'd have been in for a long car ride.

Hmmm...you know, I have a cat. He's not actually a stray...but if you want, I can just drop him off on your doorstep with some of his insulin and instructions for administration of the shots (it's ridiculously easy) one random night and then call you when I'm a safe distance away. That way, technically, he'll be a stray that you found on your doorstep. Yeah, that could work...

His only problem is that he needs two little teeny-weeny insulin shots everyday for his diabetes. He's totally healthy though, other than that. Oh, and he's got some hobbled motion in his back legs. But he can still jump up on a low couch or bed, so it's not that bad. This cat has a great disposition. You'll love him. Eleven years old. Black, with white patches on his belly and chest. Rocky is his name. Just let me know if you want to save him. I can't keep him much longer, and I don't want to have to resort to...anyway, come on, you cat lovers, take my cat! Show me some of this love of strays you're all going on about!

He would make such a great Christmas gift. You'll love this cat!

Let's see.....I really should be tucked away in bed, but I'll just list some brief details, then maybe pad them out at a later time.

My childhood memories are stuffed with various stray and/or injured birds, cats, newts, hedgehogs, even a fox cub, being brought to our house either by us kids or well meaning neighbours.
My Mum was a nurse, the only person to have any form of medical traning in the vicinity, so it went without saying that she could patch up a crow's wing with wooden ice lolly sticks and a few rubber bands.

This knack of acquiring animals obviously rubbed off on my two brothers and I, as I would reckon that during the adult part of our lives, we must have tended for (and released, if they survived the tending) at least twenty or so weird and wonderful ungrateful wee beasties.

Most memorable?

Joe Crow - circa 1963. He escaped from a film set at Elstree Studios, where he was being used as an "extra" in an old black and white thriller.
He was tame, so within minutes of escaping, he was set upon by the wild crows who all wore leather jackets and were very territorial.
He shat copiously and continually in my Dad's greenhouse for two weeks, until a local sanctuary agreed to take him.

Boris - circa 1980/90's. Boris the tiny kitten was found by my brother, shivering under a bush in the middle of a blizzard. Once home, he was thawed out, fed and bedded down, and proceeded to show his gratitude by wrecking the house for three months of his kittenhood, and turning out to be the most accident (all involving expensive ornaments) prone cat I have ever seen.
Boris went out in the garden when he was three months old, got himself pregnant, and very quickly had his name changed to Doris.
She lived until she was 21, grew very fat in her old age and was still proud to be smashing Clarice Cliffe standard china right up into her late teens!!

These stories are terrific!

Gus wrote:


What? No stray capybara stories?

Kicky, sorry your cat's still not feeling well. Poor little guy.

(Btw, that was the worst sales job I ever heard.)