Tale of the Feral Cats: Rescue Me

This is another interlude of sorts as has a tendency to happen when life keeps you busy, I haven’t had much time to sit and compose the stories and ruminations of the other strays that have come and gone over the years quite yet. But there have been some developments on the home front in the last month and a half, as two of the final three of our gang have now made their way inside the house.

It started back in early March as things continued on pretty much as normal with Scruff and Patch coming and going, while Oreo maintained residence under the sun room. He seemed to start getting a little more aggressive, however, and we noticed him watching the front of the house on a regular basis, and on occasion giving Scruff and Patch the run off. As we were also trying to avoid another flea infestation, we stopped letting him come into the sunroom, even during the bad weather days, much to his dismay. I kind of think it fueled his ambition to go after Scruff and Patch, as well as a couple of the other stragglers who still showed up every now and again. He must have thought that we would let him in just to keep him from running off everyone else. But unfortunately it was not to be – quite yet.

By this time, with Cookie gone, and both Patch and Oreo having visible health issues, I thought it was time to see if we couldn’t get them taken care of. I had ordered a trap on line with the intention of capturing Scruff, since he still kept his distance. There was also the need to try to rid ourselves of the wandering wildlife that would come looking for the food as well, plus the hope that we could still catch Catlyn, the former neighbors lost cat. So I started putting it out the week around March 7th. The first victim turned out to be another Tuxedo cat we had never seen before, and already having too many now as it was, I let the poor guy (or gal) go, and it ran off, without showing hide nor hair since. The raccoons were a bit smarter though, and found out they could grab the food off the plate from the back of the trap. So the next day I moved it away from the edge of the porch so they couldn’t reach it without going in – or so I thought. They simple grabbed it from the sides while on the porch.

A couple days later, during the early morning on the 7^th, as I was going through my normal work routine, Scruff and Patch made their appearance for breakfast. At that point, it seemed they weren’t hanging around together as much as they had in the past. We would frequently see one or the other on an almost daily basis, but not so much both at the same time. Of course I didn’t give it much more thought than that. I left the bowl out for them to chow down and headed off to work. Scruff seemed a little leary with the trap on the porch, but I hadn’t yet gotten ready to bring him in, so kept the food in its usual spot on the other side, away from the trap. Unfortunately, I seemed to have delayed one morning too long. That was the last time we saw Scruff.

Patch kept showing up a couple days here and there, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon or evening for dinner for about a week afterwards. But during that week, he quickly started looking worse for the wear. It looked like he lost a lot of weight, and didn’t look much bigger than Cookie at that point, and it seemed his fur had changed as well, his distinctive tabby stripes had faded. He felt a lot more thin and frail when I had the opportunity to pet him. At that point, I was trying to figure out the best way to get him in the house, as I didn’t think he would bother with the trap, having already been trapped twice before – once when he was TNRed, and the second time during the previous summer or fall when we were attempting to catch Catlyn before the neighbors moved out. But he saved me the trouble. I forget which day it was now, exactly – somewhere from the 15^th to the 17^th. It may have been that Sunday I was off, but it doesn’t matter much now. Anyway, in the morning, we heard a bang outside, and I knew it was the trap going off. So I got up to see what we had caught this time, and it turned out it was Patch. So I carried him in the trap right to the sunroom and let the poor guy out. He didn’t make a sound while in the trap, and barely moved. It just seemed like he knew it he needed help, and was ready to come in. The look on his face was one that cried “Rescue me now, please.” So at least we had Patchy.

 

Now it was time to turn to Oreo. Early this year, I had talked to one of the people who set up and runs their own cat rescue, and that Sunday, she just happened to inquire about the cats that were outside, and gave me the number of one of her volunteers that lived not too far from us. So we gave him a call, and he came over to the house to take a look at Oreo, primarily to make sure he was ear tipped. After confirming that, he noticed how badly Oreo’s fur had become matted on his back, and took some video to show to the rescue’s leader. They decided the best thing to do would be to take him to one of the regional rescue’s shelters and have him taken care of with shots and a shave. So it was time to bring the big boy back into the sunroom.

First we needed to move Patch upstairs, to keep him separated from the other cats since we still didn’t know what was wrong with him, and he hadn’t been vaccinated in all this time. Then it was just a matter of opening the sunroom door and letting Oreo stroll right in. That was the easy part. The hard part was going to be getting him into the carrier so that the volunteer could get him to the shelter on Friday morning. Yup, trying to wrangle a defensive feral cat is not an easy task. Oh, did I mention I am also on blood thinners from my heart attack from a year ago? Well, I got myself all dressed up in my long sleeve shirt and pullover, put on some thick gardening gloves, and enlisted the help of Erin with the wrangling. Then it came down to trying to corner Oreo to a point where I could scruff him and get him right into the carrier. Thinking back, it probably would have made the job much easier if we had emptied the room of the furniture first. But, at any rate, after about five minutes of chasing and coaxing, I finally cornered him behind one of the chairs in a position where I could latch on to the back of his neck. My first attempt missed the mark and resulted in him latching onto my hand with his mouth, but once he let go, I was able to get a hold of his scruff, and lift the big boy into the carrier. I was just thankful that he wasn’t too big to fit. So we called the volunteer and he collected our big boy to stay overnight at his house before heading to the shelter the next morning. I would head there after work to pick him up and get him back home.

So after work, I made the half hour trek to the converted warehouse, and picked up our 17 pound barrel roll. He got his shots, got his shave, and got some flea and worm medicine to boot. We headed on home, and kept him in the sunroom to recovery from the anesthesia, and to monitor for any side effects. He hasn’t left since.

Thus far, both Patch and Oreo have been doing well. Tux has been none to happy, though, and has gone after Oreo a couple of times, so we have had to keep them separated. Patch has been spending his time in the spare bedroom upstairs, where it has been quiet and peaceful for him. He seems to be doing better, but it still thin in terms of body and fur. Unfortunately, it’s going to have to be a case of getting him to one of the rescues so he can get a good home. That’s the one positive, as long as he ends up being healthy, is that he looks to turn out to be another Tiger – heck he even enjoys belly rubs too! I just have to bring myself to make that phone call and hope there is room for him.

Oreo is a different story. He still doesn’t have the disposition yet to be adoptable, so he’s going to be with us for a while. Hopefully we can get Tux to accept the situation and have them co-exist. Right now, Oreo is the one intimidated by the rest of the clan, so he tends to spend his time between the quiet of the basement and the relaxation of the sunroom. We did catch him on the couch once, when we had Tuxy locked away. The good and surprising news is that I am able to pet Oreo on occasion now, so he seems to have forgiven me for the most part for the trauma of being shoved into a carrier. Usually, it’s during feeding time, which is par for the course I suppose, but at least it’s some progress made. I still can’t help but to think of poor Scruff though. As much as we have been able to do these last four years, it still wasn’t quite a job complete. I’m hoping that he shows back up one day so we can get the last guy taken care of and into a home, even if it won’t be ours. But I’m afraid that our luck with the gang thus far has finally run out. I’m sorry I ran out of time to save you Scruff. If the worst has happened, hopefully you have made your way across the rainbow bridge to find Gandalf, Tigger, Willy, Flash, Shadow, Cookie, and Marley waiting to greet you. I miss you all.

A Leap in Time III

 

We have arrived at our third outing for quad-annual reflection of the last four years here in the Outhouse, and the world. If you missed our previous two pieces on Leap Day, you can check them out right here: A Leap in Time (2016) and A Leap in Time II (2020).

So what has brought us to this moment on February 29^th, 2024?

On the world stage, the Summer Olympics are being hosted in Paris, France this time around. There’s been some news blurbs on it over the last half year or so, but I haven’t seen too much hype about it yet. Probably the biggest current new is the War in Ukraine, which is entering its second year, and the terrorist Hamas attack on Jerusalem that happened back in October of 2023 that has sparked armed conflict in the region. There is certainly a lot more tragedy ongoing this time around than this day 4 years ago. But of course, we cannot neglect to mention COVID-19. Four years ago, we were just starting to hear word of this on the news, and no one was really sure what was going on or what it would bring. As it turned out, as I predicted in our last piece, it did indeed bring about a world-wide pandemic – one in which we are still suffering from the affects. COVID boosters are now recommended along with the annual flu shot (I got both back at the beginning of the year), and subsequently got sick. Of course the Pandemic hit closer to home for my family, like millions of other families out there over the last four years, as my father was one of the early casualties to the pandemic.

There’s another Presidential election coming up, and I don’t think any of us would of thought we could possibly see a rematch of the 2020 election, which saw Democratic candidate Joe Biden win the White House. And then all hell broke loose in our Democracy and continues to be troublesome to this day. This year’s election could very well see the end of American Democracy as we know it if saner heads do not prevail at the ballot box in November.

The weather hasn’t been as wacky this year, although mid-January saw us hit by a few storms right in a row – and saw us getting some snow to boot! Overall the temperatures have been more mild for the most part, but we have had some cold snaps. Our biggest snowfalls have happened just this month! On a wider scale, there is much more talk and evidence that global warming is having a distinct effect on the world and the weather right now. We haven’t had a summer go by in the last four years that didn’t have tornado warnings for us here on the Northeast Coast – one of which spawned a tornado the ripped down the major highway just to the north of us.

From the world, to the family, we have had some changes come to us over the last four years as well. Our hopes of moving to Lancaster/Hershey never materialized, primarily because of the Pandemic, in which, as I mentioned, saw my Father as one of the early victims in April of 2020. It also unfortunately canceled the plans Erin and I had of flying out to England for my sister’s wedding. Fortunately, the wedding still went on – much later than planned, and my sis and bro-in-law are settling into the new house they recently bought. We have had more additions to our family as well. Right around the March/April 2020 timeframe, we began to see stray cats wandering the neighborhood and over the last nearly four years now, have welcomed several into our home as house pets. Of course you can read all about those adventures right here in the blog from the last few months. We also had several home improvements – getting new sunroom in March of 2022, and then getting new siding for the house in October of that year. We also needed to have some work done on our chimney. We also added a propane backup generator to the house back in 2021 – and subsequently didn’t need it for a year thereafter. But it finally has gotten some use since then, most recently proving itself during one of those storms in January. And just yesterday we we were supposed to have most of the windows in the house replaced (all under warranty, fortunately), a project we have been waiting on for over a year and a half at this point, but because of a last minute medical appointment for Erin, it is now scheduled for tomorrow. Hopefully everything goes smoothly!

Of course, between the cats and the home improvements, money has been tight, necessitating me getting a second job – appropriately enough at PetSmart, which will help us save money on taking care of the kitties. Another big personal change for me was suffering a heart attack at the end of March 2023. That has made the biggest impact on my life and necessitated some changes in my diet to stay healthy. I can’t say I am too pleased about that, and it has been a frustrating time for me, but I am still doing what I need to do so I can maintain my health. Another change for me, not necessitated by the heart attack, but one that I needed for my mental well being was the retirement from streaming and content creation back in 2022. The stress of working all day, then coming home and trying to host a stream and create gaming videos got to be a bit much on me mentally, so I have given up those aspirations, and feel much better for it, though I do miss it sometimes.

Shannon is still going strong with her current retail occupation and is in the process of being promoted to store manager in the near future. Her parents moved back to the area from Ohio in 2022, so that at least has been a very positive change as well. Erin is now a High School graduate and has joined me in the work force at my main retail company. It has helped her break out of the anxiety and shell she built up during her high school years, which was fueled by the Pandemic. One good thing to come out of that was her ability to do remote learning, which she took to very well, and finished her last three years with strong grades. Her Freshman year was very much a struggle, and we are grateful for one of the few positive things to come out of COVID. Abby is still Abby and enjoying her 3^rd grade journey at school. She also has become a gamer like myself and Erin (who is still into Star Wars: The Old Republic), and even has her own guild in a game called Star Stable.

I guess that pretty much covers the overarching basics. This go around certainly has seen the most changes and chaos I think than the previous eight years brought us. Hopefully, come this day in 2028, we can speak of more peaceful and happy things. Hopefully we’ll still be around to actually account for them in this space. It is a future most uncertain.

Tale of the Feral Cats: Interlude

We long discovered that the cats do not like being locked out of a room that we are in. Just on one recent Sunday morning – one of the two days I don’t have to be up at 3:30 am for work – Midnight came charging in meowing at 3:15 for breakfast time. The first instinct is to try and ignore him and hope he gives up and settles down out in the living room. Sometimes it works. Other times, he gets quite insistent and will repeat the routine every couple of minutes until he gets his way. Or he starts rough housing with Tux or Tiger, knowing one of us will get up then. This was one of those mornings where he was just insistent, and I knew he wasn't going to let up.

So I staggered out of bed, filled a bowl with kibble on the kitchen counter (so Hershey can’t get to it), and promptly went back to bed – closing the bed room door for good measure. That seemed to satisfy him so I took a deep breath and cleared my mind, attempting to lull myself back to sleep. Not twenty minutes later, he went right back to his very loud meow and scratching at the door. Of course Tiger and Tux had to join in on the fun as well. They both get separation anxiety when they get locked in or out of a room and can’t sit on or near one of us. So for the next three hours they took turns pawing, scratching, and meowing outside the bedroom door. It got to the point where we could tell each one apart simply by how they scratched at the door and pawed at the knob.

So, giving up on sleep, Shannon got up and opened the door. All I could see from my side of the bed, from over the covers, was four tails in question mark form as they all rushed in and took up their usual vantage points in the room. Tux on a pile of towels on our dresser; Midnight on the headboard; Tiger plopped down on the bed next to me; and Hershey sat herself on the heating vent. So it became just another typical Sunday morning with the feral cats.

 

Tale of the Feral Cats: Cookie’s Story

When I had originally started off these tales, my goal was to wrap up 2023 with Cookie’s story. Of course time waits for no one, and real life delayed me in getting the time to sit down and write up these stories so I could get them all done before the end of the year. It’s a trivial matter, really, but one that now affects how we end this particular tale, unfortunately.

But first let’s start off by thanking everyone who donated to our GoFundMe we started for Cookie. We didn’t meet our goal, but every single dollar we received helped us keep Cookie in our home and receiving the love and medical care he needed. As it turned out, I ended up getting a part time job at the local pet store to supplement our income to ensure that Cookie would be able to stay with us, and I don’t regret a minute of it. Also, just in case I neglected to do so before, let me link you to Cookie’s page I set up on the Real Millennium Group website. I eventually hope to have a page dedicated to all the cats we have as part of our family – but time is one of those rare commodities. We still have Cookie Merchandise available to buy, which will remain in honor of the old kitten.

Cookie is our enigma. Over the near 20 years we’ve been in this particular home, we’ve seen many stray, and not so stray, cats wander through the neighborhood. Next month I plan to do a tale to all the passers-by that we have seen – that I can remember anyway. But Cookie was one that we never saw until one fateful evening in May of 2023 when he suddenly appeared in the middle of the street in front of our house. At that time, I was still on medical leave from the heart attack I suffered at the end of March. Right around dinner time, Shannon just happened to look out of the front window and saw a black and white cat sitting in the middle of the street. At first we thought it was Oreo just doing his territorial thing and standing guard over the food on the front porch. I decided to go out of the sunroom to try to coax him back with the sound of his food bowl, but he didn’t come running as usual (which was strange anyway, because he should have come from under the sunroom anyway as he always does when he hears food rattling). So I went through the gate out front and realize that the cat sitting in the street was not Oreo. This new visitor has a distinct white patch on his mouth forming a near perfect mustache. So I approached the cat with food bowl in hand from our front walkway and crouched down to entice him to see if he would come closer. And, it didn’t take much enticing because he came right up to me and allowed me to pet him as he gazed at the food bowl in my hand.

It was at that point I noticed he appeared to be starving and literally felt like he was nothing but skin and bones. So I coaxed him up to the porch, and into the house – again, he showed no hesitation in approaching me or following me into the house – bravery none of the other ferals had shown. At the time I chalked it up to the fact that he was most likely starving to death and knew this was the only pathway to getting food. So I led him to the sunroom so we could keep him separated from the rest of the crew (who were locked up in various rooms for the time being) until we could get him to the Vet. To be honest, he looked to be in such rough shape, I didn’t think he would last more than a day or two, if he managed to survive the night. So he settled into the sunroom with fresh water, food, and a litter box while we decided the next course of action, while we tried to decide on a name. At first I was think Stash or Stasia since he had a mustache, and Stasia would have been the name if he was a girl, which we though he might have been in the early going. However, none of us really liked that name, so I finally came up with Cookie, which was inspired by cookies and cream ice cream – not unlike how we gained inspiration for Oreo’s name. And now, I can’t think of anything more suiting for the old kitten.

At this point, we had already taken in Tiger and Tux, and Midnight was pretty much a regular as well, though he was still going out during the day. We just didn’t have the capacity to take in another one, never mind the fact we still had Oreo, Patch, and Scruff we were caring for as much as possible to boot. So I decided that getting him to a shelter was the best option, but wanted to make sure it would be a no kill shelter, and one that would preferably have a foster home for him to stay in. I don’t relish the thought of any of the strays being locked in a cage for most of the day of their lives, as good as the shelters try to make those lives. I just rather see them in a real home environment. So the rest of the week and some time thereafter was spent searching online, making phone calls, and sending e-mails. Unfortunately, not a single shelter I had contacted has any room (or interest) in taking him in. It seems spring time is a very busy time for cat rescues and they get overwhelmed with the amount of strays and rescues they get inundated with. So we became the de facto foster home for Cookie.

 

I made an appointment with a local vet who was attached to one of the rescue groups I had contacted. They gave him an examination, and determined that yes he was a male, but that he was also at least 14 years old, so that was one of the factors for why he appeared so famished. He also had anemia – most likely due to the flea infestation he had, which then of course spread to everyone else over the summer. And he had a Thyroid condition that required medication. That was not so unusual, as Flash has the same thing and required the same medication. We also wondered quite a bit about Cookie’s origins. After we took him in and settled him in the sunroom, he seemed to take to indoor living and the litter box with no issues whatsoever. This led us to believe that he may have been a lost kitty, or even worse, an abandoned one. I can’t imagine him having survived for all those years out on the streets, though I also wasn’t sure he was just recently put out. We still don’t know for sure what his history is, nor will we really ever. Our regular vet also suspected that he could have been abandoned due to his age and ailments. They also said that he could be much older than 14 as well. But no matter Cookie’s origins. He turned out to be a fighter. Despite his anemia, despite his double ear infection, despite his thyroid, and despite his poor eyesite and deafness – we determined that he was completely deaf – he hung in there and was content to be a part of the family. He also had an unusual way of sitting upright. It reminds me of an ancient Egyptian cat statue. It just seemed so prime and proper, and none of the other cats I have ever had sat upright in such a way. He was our regal kitty, and he loved to eat.

Yeah, we though Hershey was a bad mooch for food, but Cookie told her to hold his treats. We could not sit down to a meal without him coming right up and pawing at the plates, expecting something in return. Heck, he started eating out of my salad bowl when I had put it down on the counter to get something from the kitchen. And he loved green beans. Despite his age, he got around the house pretty well – even jumping from the kitchen bar top to the stove when he knew food was on the counter. He was also a very quiet kitty. He’s the only cat I have ever had that never meowed – except for one time during one of his trips to the vet. He would churl when pet, and he had a big loud purr, and he would hiss when upset or hurt – especially at the vet. Although during one trip he did nothing but purr for most of the time he was there, something even one of the nurses commented on because it caught her by surprise. But he would never utter any other sound.

So with us Cookie remained. He at least had put on some wait between that first vet trip and his subsequent trips to our regular vet, but he always remained thin, but a steady 5 pounds. Just due to his age, we knew the time he would have would be limited, so we spoiled him more than we did the other guys, probably much to their chagrin, and especially to Hershey’s. But they reaped some of the benefits of that I think. The rest of the crew didn’t seem to mind the new addition, either, which was a blessing. He just became a member of the family like they all did. Despite some foibles with him – the mooching, and a stretch where he was peeing regularly on the living room chair and the sunroom couch, he really just grew on us as a great companion. He wasn’t much of a lap cat, but he loved face nuzzling and loved getting his regular pettings in. He was just an overall sweet cat to have. I could never imagine how someone could have just abandoned him, if that was what truly happened to him. But unfortunately, the time we knew would be short turned out to be much shorter than we ever would have thought, and ever could have hoped it would be.

In the early morning on Thursday, January 18^th, 2024, Cookie passed away. I had a gut feeling that this time was coming all week. Cookie hadn’t been feeling well, and had developed what appeared to be a sinus/respiratory infection this month. I took him to the vet on Wednesday, and they gave me some antibiotics for the infection, and drew some blood, which he was overdue for anyway, and another reason I wanted to get him to the vet. I knew then something really wasn’t right with the old kitten because he really didn’t put up much of a fight, which he tended to do at the vet. He was pretty docile the whole time. So we got home, and I let him rest from the ordeal – drawing blood proved to be a challenge simply because it just didn’t seem to flow very well for him. A couple hours later, dinner time for the kitties came around, but Cookie wasn’t there with the rest of the crew, as he normally was. He had gone down to the basement and was laying on the carpet near my bookshelves. I tried to offer him his medicine with a lickable treat on a spoon – something that turns out to be pretty effective in giving a cat a pill. But he was not interested at all, and had no appetite. Then and there, I knew the time was coming. So I grabbed the cat bed and a litter pan and brought them over for him. He had no energy left, and struggled to get to the litter pan and back. Even Tux knew something wasn’t right and had come down to check on him. At the end of the night, I carried him up in the bed to our bedroom, so we could be close to him and he would have us there with him. Midnight then came in and checked on Cookie, much like Tux had earlier. Since I had to be up early in the morning for work, I finally had to get to bed myself. Shannon came in later, after 10 pm and checked on him before going to bed herself. He was resting comfortably, and hanging in there with the very last of the fight he had left.

About 1:45 on Thursday morning, we both woke up at the same time – something unusual for us. Shannon headed out to use the bathroom and I got up to check on Cookie. At that point, he was gone. It looked like he had tried to get out of the bed, and just collapsed, not unlike how Willy passed away years ago. It was a quiet and peaceful end, and he had his new family there in the room with him at the end. This is the sixth time I have had to say good-bye to a beloved companion as an adult. It has never gotten easier, and it has never gotten less painful as time goes on. My only hope is that there is some kind of heaven, and Gandalf, Tigger, Willy, Flash, and Marley were there to greet Cookie as he crossed the rainbow bridge. I would imagine Shadow would be there too. It’s been many years since I last saw Shadow (he stayed with my ex-girlfriend after we broke up) and imagine he would have passed around the same time as Willy, or not long after. I don’t know what brought Cookie to us, or how he managed to find us at just the right moment that we saw him sitting in the middle of the street. I can only say that it was fate that brought us together at just the moment we needed, and I so hope that Heaven is real so I can see all the companions I have had in my lifetime again, when it comes my time to go because I just want to hold each of them one more time, and especially Cookie.

Tales of the Feral Cats: Oreo’s Story

Today we reach the final day of the year in an adventure that has gone on for over three and a half years thus far. A lot has gone on over that time – some of it still feeling very surreal. Some things have changed, some things have remained very much the same, and all those usual tropes people throw around this time of year. One thing for me that has always remained constant is something that began over 45 years ago for me, when our family got our first dog as a pet – my love of animals. And so, with that love we have allowed quite the troop to become a part of our lives over these last three years, and this story is about the final member of the magnificent clowder of seven – Oreo.

Oreo is a bit of an enigma as we don’t really know when he started showing up. As I may (or may not) have mentioned in Tux’s story, we didn’t realize that there were two different black and white cats in the group until months after they started showing up and only after more attentive observation. So it could very well be that Oreo had been showing up before Tux, or they could have been together all along, and we just assumed they were the one and same cat. It was well into the first summer that I started to have questions about the wandering Tuxedo. At that point, neither one was particularly friendly and they always kept their distance. Of course I can go back and look at the few rare photos I managed to get of them and easily tell who is who at this point, but back then, it only started with a feeling that something didn’t look right one day when “Tux” was wandering through the back yard. At this point all the cats were making regular use of the ditch the groundhogs had dug under the back side of the fence, so we would routinely see them wander from the front, into the back and under the fence through the ditch. At one point, when watching the black and white cat, I noticed he had a black spot on the back of his left hind leg. Then another time, when he was wandering through, the spot wasn’t visible. Then there were a couple of times where I noticed the face, and one time the white came up to the chin and around the right side of his mouth. The next time, the face appeared all black, and looked a little more rounder than it had before.

So I got suspicious and started looking for these tell tale signs a little more closely. It took a few more weeks, as they tended to be a little more elusive and weren’t visiting at regularly convenient hours like the Orange Trio. But eventually, I was able to determine that indeed there were not one, but two separate Tuxedo cats. Tux had the white patch running up to his mouth, with his black and white hind feet sporting no distinctive spot, whilst Oreo had the rounder, all black face, and that spot on his hind leg. The confirmation was cemented one evening when they both happened to be wandering the street at the same time. They didn’t interact with each other, and each as more wary of the other than anything. One of them headed off past the neighbor’s house where the Orange Trio usually stayed, while the other eventually gave up his stalking and headed through our back yard. At that point, we had already been using the name of Tux, so we kept that for Tux and now had to come up with a name for the second Tuxedo. I had bandied about with Tux II and Edo in my head, but tossed those out in favor of the much better Oreo – for obvious reasons (the original Oreo cookie, and not all these other colors and flavors they have come out with since, of course).

Now that we knew there were two, we were able to make better observations and notice that Tux was definitely coming around a lot more than Oreo, at least during the times we could be home to observe the clowder, naturally. Neither Tux nor Oreo seemed to make use of the food and water left in the business parking lot, or at least not as much as the Trio and Midnight were. We presume they were making their home base in the junk yard, or the woods at the end of the street. I wonder now if they were part of a group or spawned from a group of Tuxedo cats from further down the main road. I just happened to notice a group of three or four of them wandering around a dirt side road one day while driving back to the house. I also wonder if Cookie also didn’t come from this group. Anyway, we were able to spot Tux at least a few times throughout the week while Oreo might be once or twice at the most. After the first winter, and as we entered the second year of watching after the group, I started making notes on the calendar every day we would see the cats. This gave us a broad indicator of their habits and allowed us to track them a little bit. I did it primarily because, as I mentioned in Patch and Scruff’s story, we didn’t see Patch at all for most of the winter, so I wanted to keep some record of when we last saw any of the cats, in case more of them pulled a disappearing act. It also became useful to make note of when other ferals came by, and we were able to pin down a few other very semi regulars.

But Oreo was just the occasional wanderer until we had our sunroom constructed in March and April of ’22. Once that had all wrapped up, Oreo wandered by one day, and hasn’t left since. He took up residence underneath the sunroom, and has been essentially a mainstay with the rest of the household. Once in a great while, we saw him wander off into the woods – usually to chase after one of the other cats, but he had pretty much made our back yard his permanent home. This has allowed me to get him to trust us more, but he is still very defensive and aside from Scruff, is the only one we have not been able to pet on a regular basis. While Scruff just maintains his distance, Oreo will bring out the claws and give a swat if a wayward hand or foot gets a little too close. He will scamper away if we keep approaching, but at this point, he does show more bravery than poor Scruff, and will tend not to scamper too far. For the most part, he stays put when he knows the food bowl is coming. While it’s comforting to know that Oreo is in a safe place and shows no interest in being anywhere else, there have been a couple of drawbacks to this situation.

First and foremost, he definitely has become territorial over the yard and will chase anyone else who wanders into it. He also has had a nasty habit of watching for anyone through the gap in the fence wandering through the street, and will come up to the front porch to stand guard, and eat the food we leave out on the porch for Patch and Scruff. Which brings up the second issue – he’s gotten to be a fat cat, quite literally. To us it seemed to happen overnight, but looking at a few pictures during the summer last year of Oreo handing on the steps of the sunroom, he blew up over the course of the fall and winter. At this point, we have limited how much we feed him to essentially a normal indoor cat portion, but we have to keep careful eye on him when he starts to head up front. He hasn’t been quite as bad as at the beginning, but he knows the food is out there for the all the other cats that come throughout the day. We do get a laugh or two out of it when he assumes the Jabba the Hutt position to do some cleaning, or rolls around like a barrel when we toss him a toy to play with. Which brings up something very interesting about our boy Oreo – he very much wants to be an indoor housecat.

During the Autumn last year, after it was clear that Oreo was a permanent resident under the sunroom, I set up one of the shelters we had made on the left side of the room, opposite the outdoor entryway, and positioned it so he could go in and out from under the sunroom. I remember thinking it was quite remarkable that it turned out that the elevation of the room above the ground was the perfect height to allow easy access to the hole in the shelter. Then I nailed up some extra siding we had left over from the unexpected project of having our house resided, around the three sides of the room to give Oreo a bit more privacy and protection (and to also prevent him from seeing anyone coming through the back yard from the ditch and  wood’s side of the house). So the big boy has his own little slice of territory to call his own. However, during one particularly cold spell last winter, I felt bad for him (especially since his size made it a struggle to through the hole in the shelter), so I let him into the sunroom, which was kept warm by a table top space heater we had bought. Turns out that good ole Oreo had no problems making himself quite a home inside. He quickly learned that a chair cushion was much more comfortable than a pile of hay, and he had no issues with figuring out what a litter box was for. As a result, we would let him in on stormy and cold nights for the rest of the winter and early spring. It got to the point where the first thing he would do when coming in would be to play the with toys we had in the room. He would even sit by the kitchen door and observe our indoor crew coming and going. At one point, they all would come and sit by the door with Oreo on the other side and just hang out, watching each other.

It got to the point where Oreo got so comfortable being inside, I started to wonder if he just hadn’t been an indoor cat prior in his life who had just escaped the house. It took some effort getting Tiger to use the litter box normally, whereas Oreo took to it on the first night. Aside from his defensive swatting, you would never think he was an outdoor cat during those times he was inside. Heck, I often had to coax him out with the food bowl just to get him back outside. Unfortunately, the side effect of having Oreo share the sunroom with the rest of the troop has been trying to fight the massive flea infection we inherited this past summer. Without being able to interact with Oreo physically, we can’t give him monthly treatments of flea medicine, so unfortunately, we can’t bring him in the house any more. I wish I had more time and ability to work with him because I think with more interaction, he will eventually drop that defensiveness and would be able to be a normal housecat and companion as some point in the future. But those pitiful meows he utters when on the sunroom landing and we are just hanging out together are hard to resist. He definitely wants to be inside. I have been contacting every shelter and rescue that I can since Cookie arrived to try to find one that has room for fostering cat, but so far, no one can take any more animals in, and I certainly don’t want any of them going from the freedom of being outdoors to sitting in a cage for who knows how long. I am hoping to make a connection at some point with someone who can take the big boy in and give him the love and care that he needs to become the healthy and happy housecat he deserves. In the mean time, we will be doing what we can for our standoffish, but lovable barrel roll, because at the end of the day, he has really become as much a part of the family as Tiger, Tux, Midnight, and now Cookie have become.