Rescue Story: My Spare Tortie, Sienna

December 17, 2025 Bernadette

Sienna was a TNR kitty who turned out to be socialized though she did not make eye contact, ran when anyone moved, and only came to eat when no one was looking. But the next morning after we’d trapped her during a polar vortex she was talking and rubbing her face on the inside of her trap. Well, I guess I had space for a foster…She was up for adoption for years, but she wasn’t having it. This week we celebrate eight years as a member of the family, including time served as a foster.

December 22, 2017, my first post about my “spare tortie in the bathroom”

I’ve had a guest in my foster room since last Tuesday! She’s a very nice tortie girl, soft and round and affectionate who I’m calling Sienna. It’s apparent she was someone’s cat, but not sure who. Here’s what I posted the day after she came here.

FOUND: very friendly adult tortie, on 2nd Avenue in Carnegie. Neighbors have been feeding her since July, she was very thin but filled out nicely since then. No microchip. They were concerned about her in this snow and cold and trapped her the other night. They have been looking for an owner since she showed up but no one has responded. She was skittish outside but now that she’s inside she’s a VERY friendly and nice kitty, talkative, loves laps, loves pets. Someone must be missing her, please share.

Her post has been shared widely and two people have stopped to see if she is their tortie, but she is not. So she can settle here until after Christmas and then meet some of my friends at one of the shelters. Such a nice kitty would have no problem being adopted! The photos of her on the windowsill are from yesterday, all others are from the day after she came here.

Photos of her face were difficult because she likes to be close and doesn’t sit still unless she’s on your lap. When she is on your lap she regularly looks up and gives nose kisses. Eventually she will roll over on her back and ask for belly rubs. She is also a great conversationalist.

She has the most amazing soft round paws. She actually has a very pleasant cobby plushy tortie build that I adore. Her coloring is very dark with just speckles and very few big spots except for the large spot on the top of her head that I call her “start” button. I named her Sienna for her warm dark coloring.

No, she has not met the household yet, and likely she will not. She is still in her two-week quarantine and introducing an adult to the household might be more stress than she or my household need for a short stay.

I'm just hanging out here. — I’m just hanging out here.

She’s been enjoying watching the squirrel in the tree outside the bathroom window.

I'm busy watching the squirrel. — I’m busy watching the squirrel.

Here are a few more photos of her. Wish her luck in her journey toward a forever home!

You might need a tortie in your life!

Today, December 17, 2025

Well, it looks like I’m the one who needed a tortie in my life! I had gone had been five years without a tortie, but that wasn’t on my mind when I released this talkative little tortie from her trap into my bathroom and sat down to get to know her.

No TNR for this girl!

As frightened as she was her caretaker was fond of her and would TNR her, hoping she might become more friendly in time. He and a friend I worked with in this neighborhood had thought she was a kitten when she first showed up, thin, frightened, running away at the slightest provocation. And if that was July and this was December, she would still have been a kitten then and since she is a petite eight pound adult she would have been on the smaller side. There was talk that she was wearing a pink collar when she first showed up, but if it had been there it disappeared somewhere along the way and there was no mark in her fur from a collar.

After I let her out of the trap into the tub I had to return the trap to her caretaker, who had borrowed it from the shelter. I set out some food and water and closed and latched the bifold bathroom door, setting up a baby gate outside it that would act as a baffle if she tried to escape when I came back in. About a half our later I went upstairs with a cup of coffee and my phone intending to just sit in there and see what she did.

I didn’t see her anywhere or hear any noise when I slid the bifold door open and stepped over the baby gate so I quietly sat down on the toilet lid. Behind me was the tank and next to that the little cubby behind the tub where I had some shelves and stored bathroom paper goods and towels. I could see the whole bathroom except into that cubby and beneath the small cabinet and she wouldn’t be the first rescue to climb into that cubby for safety.

On my lap right away

Within minutes I heard little shuffling noises in there, noises that seemed to come a little closer, and then suddenly there was a paw on my shoulder then there was a tortie on my lap, curled up as if she’d always been there, purring and squinting up at me, blinking, then turning and airkneading.

Looking at her dark fur with tortie speckles she was overall dark but very warm in color. I immediately named her Sienna, a color made of earth containing both iron oxide and manganese oxide, as one of the first colors used by humans it’s found in cave paintings in both its raw state where it’s a dark cooler brown, and its burnt state where it’s a rich reddish brown, both of them favorite colors of mine and included in just about every animal portrait as well as many landscapes. She seemed to like that name and I’ve never wavered from it.

Sienna insists on standing on me while she eats.

She was so determined to stay on me that evening that I moved to the floor and stretched out my legs so she had more to walk on. She insisted on standing on my legs while she ate as if she was afraid to let go of the connection, but later when I had to stand up she was okay with sitting on the bath rug looking gorgeous.

I'm a very nice girl. — I’m a very nice girl.

Affectionate but very shy of strangers

I borrowed a chip reader and found she was not microchipped. I spent most of the rest of December sharing her everywhere, convinced she could be lost. Several people came to see her who did have lost torties, and some not even from Carnegie where we live, but she wasn’t their tortie. But in that time I also learned that, despite the fact she was on my lap in minutes and all over me constantly after that, she was even more than painfully shy, she was traumatized by encountering other people. How did this sweet girl manage to live outdoors, sneaking up to feeding stations to avoid humans and even other cats, for at least six months and probably more? Hopefully she would relax with indoor life.

She was my personal rescue, not a foster for Homeless Cat, so I’d take care of her adoption. Since she was socialized, healthy, and very affectionate her next move was to be surrendered to Beaver County Humane Society for adoption after the holidays when they had full staff and regular hours again. I had surrendered other friendly community cats to them and appreciated the work they did finding the best home. They would vet her, spaying if she wasn’t already spayed and she’d get her tests and vaccinations. Because they would take care of her vetting I would keep her in the bathroom for quarantine, and that seemed to suit her—she had no interest in leaving the room. But how would she do in a shelter?

And then she developed a urinary issue and all ideas of a shelter were out the window. In fact seeing the nature of the little puddles of liquid she left in the tub I was concerned she might have pyometra. I had her spayed and given the works. Her paperwork had “about 1 year” written as the estimation of her age, so she’d be a late winter or early spring baby. After she recovered I worked on integrating her into the household hoping that being spayed and being around other friendly cats would help her weather the adoption process.

Looking for the purrfect home for Sienna

A friend who had been recently widowed and loved cats was very interested in my photos of her and came to meet “the tortie Sienna,” spending time with Sienna in my bedroom. Though Sienna did come out from under the bed my friend wasn’t able to touch her, or get her to play. She would be having her grandchildren visit once a week or so, and also be traveling now and then to see friends and family. Had Sienna been a confident tortie that would have all been fine, but though I knew Sienna would be fine with my friend in time, boisterous grandchildren would terrify her, as would a petsitter while her human was missing.

Another longtime friend who lives a state away loved the look of her because she reminded her and me very much of a former tortie in her life. We didn’t think Sienna would handle the travel very well, and she too has an active household, and a d-o-g.

She continued showering her affection on me. From the very beginning, it was as if she couldn’t get close enough. Not long after the meeting with my friend I sat down at my computer downstairs and she raced in, leaped on my lap and actually stood up and put her arms around my neck, rubbed on my face and even crawled up onto my shoulder and then back down, and settled herself firmly in my lap, purring, kneading, and glancing up at me, blinking her eyes. I had also been a total stranger, and not only that I’d trapped her and moved her around in the trap.

Sienna’s many fears

In early photos of Sienna out in the household you’ll see she’s wearing a purple calming collar. As I introduced her to the household and for times even later than that she would reach a point where she became a little overwhelmed by the household or noises or changes and would start to hide, and the calming collar helped her along with Rescue Remedy and maybe some calming treats. I’m grateful for that because a cat with her temperament could easily become one to sequester herself in one room if it was all really too much.

Back at the beginning my friend had told me that she and Sienna’s caretaker noticed she seemed to be afraid of men, despite the fact her caretaker was a man. I thought Sienna was probably so frightened outside she was afraid of everyone. But once Sienna was out in the house and one day in my studio looking out the window into the street, she growled when one of my male neighbors walked out of his house to his car, and did so again another day with another male neighbor, though had no reaction to children or women.

She can also be traumatized by noises, like the day months after she’d joined us when a friend and I had to cut into my kitchen ceiling to fix a leak in the bathroom. Mariposa hid upstairs and Bella in the basement, but they came out about an hour after the noise stopped. Four hours later I still hadn’t seen Sienna and went looking for her, shaking a treat bag. Sienna was settled so deep onto the ductwork atop the furnace that I couldn’t even see her and it took about two minutes for her to extricate herself, and several days for her to come up to the kitchen again for anything aside from meals. Repeatedly through the years, I’ve gotten to know Sienna’s hiding places.

Basil was her protector back then, as he was of all the frightened cats, from kittens to adults, who are managing their way through the house.

Sienna and Basil and Feline Home Economics.

In July 2023, the night before the kitchen renovation floor replacement was to begin and I had to confine all the cats to the basement, they all went down to the basement for the smorgasbord of gooey smelly wet food I’d put out in dishes to lure them down—except Sienna. I hated to try to chase her down there and it didn’t work anyway. I had blocked the doorway to my office with a bookcase, couldn’t catch her, and she ran past me and sailed over the bookcase, disappearing upstairs under my bed. I closed and blocked the basement door with the others still down there and kept my bedroom door closed, feeding Sienna in there for the week the work was being done. Poor Sienna!

And she was a little intimidated by the number of cats in the room sometimes. She loves other cats, you see her cuddle all the time, but I know it was the nature of the housepanthers to move in a group and be very physical, never rough or aggressive, but I’m not sure how long I’d be okay with a bunch of friendly humans crowding around me. At first I thought for her best life I really thought she needed to live with fewer cats but eventually she adjusted to that, sleeping on the bed and being part of large gatherings in the kitchen.

Basil, Giuseppe, Sienna, Mariposa, Mr. Sunshine all on the cabinet.

Eight years later

So now around her anniversary much has changed in those years, but Sienna is still my girl. Her favorite time is going to bed when she’s so excited she can’t settle down, and second favorite is when we wake up with her tucked up against me, immediately aware that I’m awake before I even move, getting into position for her morning love session. I remember the first night she was out of the bathroom foster room…

Another Love

Your first night out of the foster room
you were waiting for me on the bed
as if you’d anticipated this
from the day I brought you here in the trap,
now, purring, twirling, looking
by turns expectant and uncertain;
I could see
you had known this moment before
in another home,
happy, safe
then you were outdoors
alone and terrified.
I wonder, as always, how did it happen?
Still, in the dark
your tiny wet nose
found the tip of my nose
quickly leaving a cold, wet dot of love
before your first night,
so happy you almost couldn’t settle down,
tucking into the warm spot next to me
you knew would be there.

I guess she chose me the moment she met me and, like my first tortie Cookie, and so many since then, she never found an adopter because she was supposed to be here. Who could resist?

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Vintage cigar box keepsake and tile, “Draw Me Like One of Your French Cats”

I have one keepsake and one tile left with Sienna on them at the moment. You can find the keepsake and the tile on Portraits of Animals.

Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.