An update on the Formerly Feral Felines
It’s now been a year and a half since we discovered the little cat family living under our deck, and they’ve made such progress. If it weren’t for the fact that we still can’t pick them up, you’d probably never know they used to be feral.
We submitted their story to Borders for their Hopeful Tails book project, and it was accepted. You can see a short story and sweet photo of our girls on page 79 of the book, and if you purchase a copy they will donate $1.00 to the ASPCA (through June 2008). One funny note: in the abridged version of their story that was published, my name was changed from Wendi to Melissa in the middle of the paragraph. Everyone who sees the book wants to know who Melissa is!
They each have their little quirks:
Maxie loves to jump onto one of the kitchen stools when we’re cooking. She peeks her face over the corner of the kitchen island to watch and sniff the enticing aromas, but she always stays on the stool and never tries to jump up onto the counter.
Gracie is our Flying Wallenda. We often find her on the fireplace mantel or on top of our work oven in the workshop. She’s the one most likely to leap from surface to surface without hesitation. She’s also still absolutely in love with our dog, Toby!
Alice, or Ally-Cat, has finally warmed up and become extremely affectionate. She loves to come up for chin scratches, and will flip over in a ninja roll when you start to pet her. We’ve never seen a cat do somersaults before!
Now that the weather is slowly turning cooler, we find them lounging on our bed most days. They tend to hang out downstairs in the summer and in our bedroom during winter. It makes Dave a little bit nervous; he has to race Maxie into the bedroom and try to leap into bed before she gets there! Otherwise he has to try to slip under the covers without her thinking it’s a game – a couple of times we’ve had cats attacking our toes under the covers and boy, their teeth are sharp!
Sabrina and Sugar have formed a little gang of two and are accepting the newest family members really well. Sugar had some fun over the summer when he had to be hospitalized for a urinary blockage. It turned into a fairly major deal and he ended up with surgery and a Perineal Urethrostomy. The recovery period was fairly long and he had to wear an Elizabethan Collar to keep him from irritating the incision. This absolutely terrified the New Girls and he seemed to get a little thrill out of strutting by with his collar and watching them flee in horror. What a stinker!
We’ll leave you with a photo (this was not Photoshopped) in honor of Halloween, albeit a bit belatedly:
Boo!
