A Day in the Lives of Several Cats and People

February 10, 2019February 11, 2019 Bernadette

Friday was a pendulum swing of a day regarding cats in our community though it all ended out pretty well.

The morning began with a message from a neighbor where we’d trapped the kittens and their parents at the beginning of January that a black and white cat had been hit by a car at the end of the street. Photos were shared, and it wasn’t pretty.

My first thought was that the older tux kitten we hadn’t trapped had been hit. I knew it had been hanging around the last two houses at that end of the street now and then. Not trapping the kitten that night or later has been weighing on my mind and that hit hard. We had no idea where the kitten was after we trapped its family so it was impossible to know where to set traps. But no matter, if a kitten lost its life, I really should have worked harder.

But a group member said it was identified as a cat named Panda who belonged to her friend’s cousin’s kids who had accidentally gotten out of the house. The mom, who is a vet tech, went to retrieve the cat from the street and take it to work to be cremated.

Not the tux kitten, but those children grieving for their kitty…

Panda was a four-month kitten, though, and this was an adult, and the photo of Panda didn’t match. So the cat who’d been hit was not Panda, but Panda was still missing.

And, oh, no, Denise feeds a black and white kitty named MooMoo. I messaged her, breaking the news gently so not to upset her just in case. But, yay, MooMoo had been there at breakfast and he was out on her porch at that moment. Whew, not MooMoo!

I shared the post about the cat who’d been hit in the appropriate groups, no responses there.

But to lighten the afternoon, Shannon messaged about Smokey’s comfort in his new setup and that he’d used both the scratcher and the hammock. Definitely a pick-me-up!

Then mid-afternoon I just happened to see a friend’s post in a lost cat group showing a young black and white kitten found on exactly the street where Panda had lived. I spent a few frantic minutes sharing the posts back and forth to show the lost kitten to Panda’s family and Panda’s photo to the friend who had found the kitten, and yes, it was Panda! He was back home in an hour or two, as soon as everyone got home from work. The kids were thrilled! A lost cat back home!

Then Peg gave an update on LeRoi, one of the two adult cats we’d trapped there in January, the presumed father of the two kittens Rosie and Vanilla Latte. Not only are his kitten-making days over but his days of prowling the streets are too! Ink is clearly the feral type but LeRoi had always been a little more social with people, and when the cold weather came last week he asked friend Peg Bowman if he could come in, and that’s apparently his final decision. That’s a really happy ending for a former community cat!

Then I got to see Smokey for myself and he is indeed a different cat, no hisses at all, very calm and relaxed, though by no means instantly socialized.

And I also got to see Brodie, the little kitten I trapped a week and a half ago as temperatures were dropping before the polar vortex. He’s a total sweetie now. I got to hold and cuddle him, and we had a selfie. Amy and her granddaughter wear those frightened kittens down fast!

And the tux kitten has been seen with its mom, Ink. She seems to be calming down though not friendly, but the kitten is very skittish. Now that it seems to be settling into a new pattern, it’s time to trap again. The tux is probably too old to be socialized, but there is always a chance.

We still didn’t identify the black and white cat hit by the car. It’s odd that a cat none of us knew showed up that way. I am almost sure it’s an indoor only cat who got out unintentionally, and its person isn’t part of our network, so we’ll have to look a little harder.

That’s one day of cat things, and I didn’t even mention my own home, which was uneventful, but always fun. I will be updating on Smokey and Brodie this week.

PHOTO AT THE TOP: It has nothing to do with any cats in this story, but it’s a neat photo from a 2015 escapade chasing escaped rescued kittens around someone’s house and finding them in the closet behind a mirror facing the wall. I was excited to find them and be able to grab them, but not until I got the photo.

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