A Home for Moonbeam

     I'm settled in my study for my morning writing. I hear a little kitty voice, a distinctive one that sounds like a lilting  r r r t t t with a question mark at the end. Moonbeam has a whole vocabulary of sounds. She is my best buddy, the most devoted of my four cats. This particular sound asks me a question. "Why havn't I gotten my morning hug?" A black cat with a white chin and tummy, built like a linebacker with short legs and sturdy body lands solidly on my desk, next to my computer.

     She leans into my hand, rubbing and purring, checks to see if the coast is clear and launches on to my lap. She shadows me , follows me from room to room. Wherever I am she will be there also.  And she is feral. How can that be?

     Thanks to Leslie Vogt and Jan Link of the Northern Colorado Friends of Ferals, she has had a chance to bloom, to become the sweet companion that she is. Thankfully she was picked up when she was a kitten, from a hoarding situation in a filthy alley and shed, barely protected from the elements and fighting for her food.

     Who knows if she still was with her mother. Along with being hungry she had an infected eye. I found out later it probably was a ocular hernia. Bottom line she couldn't see out of it. I don't know how much pain she was in.
  
      I learned that since she was picked up from an impossible situation she could not go back to it like most other feral cats happily return to their colonies after being spayed or neutered. She had to became a barn cat. And I had a barn. The morning I picked her up after her surgeries and shots  (and I didn't know she was a she for a year, that was how long it took to be able to touch her) along with a possible sister and another cat that might have been her mother, I had no idea how I was going to take care of these three cats. I just knew I wanted to help in any way I could.

     They were scared, hunched in the back of the live traps they were in. I remember feeling so bad for them. They were stone silent. Eventually I got them into a small room in my barn where they could become acclimated and then, when let out hopefully would stay.

     It is pretty easy to assume that feral cats are not socialized enough to become house cats. It does take some special circumstaces. It is hard to tell if a cat was abandoned or born feral but if captured at a young enough age, it is possible for them to be adopted. Of course some are clearly happy to live outside and some are abandoned house cats and once they have been treated, they can go home with a family. You just never know.

     I was careful. I didn't know how wild they were, if at all. I learned quickly that they had a ways to go. But I was patient with them. After about 5 weeks I could play with them (toy on a string) and put their food in front of them instead of moving it close to them with a stick. And I always talked to them when I went in to feed them. They won my heart.

     Shortly after they had settled into a routine, I let them out into the barn. They played in the hay and cuddled in a warm den I built inside of one of the stalls.. They began to follow me when I went to the barn to feed them, Moonbeam even came up to the house and sat under the kitchen window and meowed. Soon I was even able to pick them up occasionally.

     Sadly, because of the fox and coyotes in my area I lost both Lollipop and Polka Dot in their first year. Moonbeam was the only one left in the barn. As it got colder and she was by herself I tried to get her to come in the house. Little by little her curiosity got the best of her and she came in to explore. With hardly any fanfare, it didn't take long for her to  blend in with my other 3 cats. She loves it, is not interested in going back to the way it was. She is home.

 

The Sun Spot

Mookie and Lily. An unlikely pair, not by looking at them because they are both white and black Tuxedo cats. Lily is my oldest cat and Mookie the youngest. Lily lost her litter mate Callie several years ago. She and Callie were close buddies. But Callie got out one day soon after we came to the farm and did not come back. Lily grieved for a long time, hid under my bed for most of a year. She really was not pleased when I moved Taffy and Cookie in from the barn when they were kittens. She intimidated them so much that now when Taffy and Cookie are bigger she still does.


After we got the 3 new barn kitties Lily would growl and glare out the window at them and also at any neighbor cat that wandered by. When Lily saw them she would stage a huge hissy fit. But one day our barn kitty, Moonbeam (Mookie), sneaked up to the house and sat under a window and meowed. I observed an unusual sight. Lily just stared out the window at her. No growling, no hissing. When Moonbeam disappeared around the corner of the house Lily jumped down from the window and tried to follow her to the next window to get another view of her.

I’d never know if she thought it was Callie but her behavior made me think it was possible. Then it ended up that I had to bring Moonbeam into the house because she was the last barn cat. I hoped Lily would remember the initial experience. It was not to happen. But eventually I noticed that Lily was not hissing or growling at Moonbeam while she still did occasionally toward Taffy and Cookie.

Then one day I was reading in the room where the sun came in onto the bed in a welcome warm spot on a cold day. Lily had not allowed another cat to be in that sun spot with her unless I intervened. Mookie came up and gingerly stretched out in a corner of the sun. Lily watched her lie down but there was no hissing or growling. Mookie was alert but didn’t move a muscle. Lily relaxed and in a minute, so did Mookie. As Lily relaxed she stretched out her back legs till one touchd Mookie on her leg. I held my breath. Lily was quiet. As they laid there together I realized it was the first time Lily had quietly touched another cat since we lost Callie. I was thankful.

Mookie Moves In

      The days after Polka Dot disappeared were dark and cold for me. But I wasn’t the only one. Moonbeam was by herself in the barn. More than once I would go out just to make sure the heating pad was working in her ‘warming house’. It was more important now that there was no other cat for her to snuggle up with. The temperature had dropped to 10 degrees and would probably be below 0 before this cold snap was through with us. When it was this cold I didn’t see her very often. She stuck close to the barn.
      But she was alone. All the time now. I know it has ben said that that cats are by nature solitary, but I don't believe it.  Little Moonbeam with only one eye was vulnerable with her gregarious sister no longer helping her.
     So after mulling it over in my mind I casually mentioned to John that if it got down to 0 degrees I would have to see if I could bring her in the house. ( I knew it would not be just for a visit) I knew I could probably pick her up and carry her in a carrier. I had been able to pick her up in the barn to doctor her once  but if it didn’t work it would be hard get her to come in again. She had actually come into the house a few times on her own, poked her head around and then run right back out.
     So I planned this elaborate plan where I would bring her into the house in a carrier and let her out while I kept the other cats in another room She very graciously went into the carrier where I had placed some treats. I closed the door and picked her up. I didn’t hear a sound. I got her to the house and let her out and she sat hunched over for a minute and then started slinking across the kitchen, belly to the floor.
     That first time she was comfortable for only a minute and then loud protesting meows came out of her small body. When I opened the sliding door she darted out and headed for the barn. She found her own way. Over the next few days as the temperature dropped more I brought her in several times. Only now she would follow me to the house from the barn. No need for a carrier. After a while she stopped protesting and was able to explore the rest of the house quietly.
     The day came when it was time for her to come into the house. I set up a wire kennel in the walk-in closet so she would have a relatively small area to observe her suroundingd. I kept a towel over the cage too, for the same reason.
     The first night I kept her in the kennel all night. She quit meowing after a while. In the morning I let the other cats into the room. It was mostly a non-event for Cookie and Lily. They walked by with hardly a notice. But Taffy, the laid back, more social kitty walked up to the kennel and gave it a good sniffing over. No hisses or growls. And then the next thing I saw was Taffy lying down beside the cage. She was Moonbeam’s first friend. I added a nick-name to her, it was Mookie, and since it sounded so much like her old name she responded to it instantly. She had taken the first step well, we would see how the rest would go. And even I was starting to feel better.