Touching feral stories

[Straysmommy]

Hi everyone, in this thread I'll be posting anecdotes that happen to me with my strays / ferals / abandoned / hospitalized / former strays - just because I love sharing and also in hope that I'll inspire others to share their own touching stories on this thread too. I dedicate the thread to Samantha, now at the bridge, whom Bob loves dearly (Bob inspired me to start writing my anecdotes).

I'll start by reposting some anecdotes I shared on other threads...

[Greenport ferals]

Little black and white Stubby was one of four ferals I accepted from Animalkind, our local rescue group. He was about 6 months old at the time and came with his mother Bella. Also adopted were Cowboy and Rookie. All four were successfully integrated into my established colony. That was last March.
In June, Stubby went missing and reappeared a few weeks later with a broken, withered hind leg. I trapped him the same day and took him to the vet.
It did not look good. The leg had already started to heal out of position. My vet was very gentle with Stubby, despite him being completely feral. Her best advice was to keep him quiet and confined, no running, no jumping and see how he progressed. Amputation was mentioned, and I didn't even want to think of it.

So Stubby went from the colony in the barn to a dog crate in a spare room in my house. I raised it up so it was level with the open window; at least he could look out. Domestic life was all new to him. Over a month he went from lashing out and spitting to a curious, playful teenager. He still didn't want to be touched, but that was OK. The first day I saw him use his hind leg to scratch his ear I knew he would recover.

Stubby got out of the crate August 1 and progressed to the whole room and then the whole house. Within three weeks he was going outside.
His leg recovered completely.

He still shrinks from my touch, but I know how he feels about me. He will sit very close to me and just beam when I praise him. Stubby is different - no easy victories here - and I love him for that.

[Whaler]

about a year and a half ago when i was just starting to try to colonize the feral cats in my area i first saw a beautiful gray tiger top / white underside cat. he would never come within 50 feet but he would come around for food.

i was not planning on trying to trap him right away since i was more focused on the ones with babies as well as i was doing this solo so i had to prioritize. my plans made a very fast change when a few weeks later i saw him in the woods and he was unable to put one of his back legs down. unfortunately the brush is dense enough that there was no way for me to get near him before he could hobble away. a week or so went by and i figured that he had died. then one night when i was getting the cats dinner ready as well as my one trap he was there at the spot that i feed them but he had two huge wounds, each about 2 inch by 4 inch. so there i am with one trap and 5 adult cats and 2 kittens that are all very hungry. long story short, after about 2 hours in the dark i was able to get enough plates of food and act like a sheep dog and get him in the trap before any other one went in.

he was at the vet the next morning and while i was fearing the worst the vet said that while his leg was broken (she feels that he had gotten caught in something and broke his own leg freeing himself) it was seemingly healing well. the large wounds were shaved and there was no sign of infection so an antibiotic injection, rabies vaccine and altering later he was given the ok to return the next day. now,a very full grown boy (i estimate about 17 lbs) he never misses a meal, comes to me when i call his name and even lets me pull ticks and give him a dose of revolution. i even have just started to lift him off the ground a few inches after being so worried way back then i can not believe how well everything has worked out.

[Straysmommy]

When I first arrived in the neighborhood, there was a cat downstairs in the public garden that wouldn't let the neighbors sleep at night. It screamed and screeched a lot at nights. A couple years later, when I became a cat lover and started feeding the strays, this cat would run to me as I put the food down and rub against my legs a lot, fiercely, no matter what I did to try and stop her. She was wild, chasing almost all cats away from the food and the feeding station, screaming and running and instilling terror in the feeding station. Many cats stopped coming to eat because of her. All cats feared her very much and some neighbors too. I called someone who is very experienced and told her this stray is destroying my colony. This person came immediately, TNR'ed her, and as a result the cat calmed down enough for me to be able to start working on her. She was still very wild, though, but now I knew that she was actually terrified herself. Fast forward half a year......if you pass by the feeding station in the evenings, she's sitting on my lap on the park bench, purring away and asking me to take out my slicker brush already and start combing her cheeks and chin. She has her own spot on the bench where she gets her own big bowl each dinner. She hardly ever chases a cat away and she's almost always silent. No noise from her at nights. When something scares her and I'm around, she just entwines her tail with my legs and stays next to me till the fear passes. She comes with me into the building lobby sometimes and sits with me on the comfy sofa there. She's my main companion in the colony, always with me. Little do the neighbors know about the story behind the new quiet in the area...

[cooncatbob]

My cat before Samantha was Meme, she was a stray dumped in the office park where I worked for 21 years.
She could have gotten there on her own and she was rescued by the girls in the office and then picked me to be her person.
I did feed the colony of ferals for many years, I didn't know what I know know and they were never friendly to me, it was all hiss, put down the food and go away.
I would save all the left over cat food at home and any left over meat for them, my employer Barbara a life long cat lover provide dry food and generic wet food for them.
I also didn't know about "spay/neuter release" so they the queens would have their yearly litters.
I wish I could have done more for them, but on the whole there were no stray dogs or other predators and lots of safe areas between the many warehouses and a pretty mild climate.

[Greenport ferals]

Great stories, everyone. Whaler, nice to hear from you.

[Whaler]

Originally Posted by Greenport ferals

Great stories, everyone. Whaler, nice to hear from you.

thanks! its nice to have a little free time for a change. between work, my colony, my socialized feral and my 20 yo cat at home it had started to seem that free time was no more than a myth.


i agree that the stories have been great, i hope to hear lots more. it is very reassuring to know that the love i have for my "guys" is not all that unusual.

[Ritzpg]

I've been taking care of a community cat colony for over a year. Since November 2010 I've TNRd around 20 cats.
Because of unit owner's complaints, a friend and I re-trapped five cats since January 2011. We moved them into a spare room in her house (the "Cattery") to resocialize them and adopt them out into a Forever Home. Two have been placed into homes, one is ready to be adopted out, and one is too feral but will stay in the cattery until we move her into a farm in April 2011. "Buckley"--see other posts--escaped from the cattery, made his way back to the colony two miles away, and last week was able to be scruffed and placed into a cat carrier, where I returned him to the cattery to keep the feral cat company. Although he acts sometimes like he'd like to escape, over all, he is friendlier, calmer. He will be placed up for adoption in a few weeks.
It's been rewarding also to experience the trust the cats in the colony now have. Yeah, some will always run from me when I feed them, but now I can pet some of the ones that were initially scared of me. They recognize me, my car, and tell time better than I do.

[Ritzpg]

Another heart warming story:
The newspaper lady and I keep similar hours; she distributes the newspaper about the same time I distribute food to the ten cats who regularly dine at my "restaurant" (dumpster in front of my condo building). Today she stopped me while she was in hercar, said, I've noticed you've been feeding the cats, that's so nice of you, and I would like to make a donation. I was so surprised, I said "that would be lovely" (versus, "ah, no, I do this out of love for the cats...").
So, even if people don't say anything, they see you taking care of the cats. And appreciate it.

[Goldtanker]

I posted this story a while ago in another thread.

This is Bon Jovi - a wild cat (named by my young granddaughter) that I fed under the porch quite a while ago for a total of 8 years. I made an insulated shelter for him under there but he never used it. After he ate he left and stayed somewhere in the woods (we live out in the middle of nowhere). Living in the wild in Minnesota is truly an effort even for animals native to the climate. In all those years he would never let me touch him. I would put a dish in front of him, close enough to touch his whiskers, but if I reached to pet him, he would hiss at me. One can only imagine the mistreatment he suffered as a kitten.