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.

Tales of the Feral Cats: Midnight’s Story

Well, if you haven’t guessed by now, we have used a rather simple naming convention for the clowder of boys who have called our street their territory. So I guess it would come as little surprise how the last member (thus far) of the original group to become house broken got his name. And that leaves only one more fella to talk about from the originals before we reach our grand (almost) finale with Cookie – who we are still fundraising for by the way! I just want to send another thank you to everyone who has made a donation to Cookie’s fund over the last few months. Every single bit has helped us keep Cookie, and all the cats sheltered, fed, and healthy.

Midnight, the lone black cat of the group, though he does have a few white hairs dispersed about his coat here and there, with a group near the lower part of his throat – not enough to be a patch, but enough to be noticeable, so it seems there might be a Tuxedo in his heritage. So we had a couple of names for him, the first of which Abby came up with was Shadow. But since I already had a black Shadow in my past who was another rescue too, via my brother when he was working as a school janitor. Hmm, perhaps we might have an extension to our Tales stories at some point in the future. But anyway, Shadow as a name was out, so the next option that popped into my head was the one we went with. While his name may not be all that unusual, Midnight himself did turn out to be unique among the group. He was the only one who, from the outset was brave, or friendly, enough to allow us to pet him. Turns out it seems black cats tend to be more friendly, at least according to the vets when they were at the house for Tiger’s and Tux’s check-ups over the summer. While Hershey and Cookie observed from a distance, Midnight had no problems coming up to investigate and demand some attention. Of course he learned his lesson when we needed to make an emergency trip to the vet with him not too long afterwards. But yes, he would come right up to us for some attention and a good back rub before chowing down or moseying along his way. He did the same for the employees of the business behind our house. He spent a lot of time back there along with Patch and Scruff, since as mentioned, they had also set up food , water, and shelter for the strays. We would look out of our back windows and often see him wandering about the parking lot, greeting the workers as they came and went around the building. I imagine that they must have considered him a mascot at some point as it was pretty much a daily occurrence.

As I might of mentioned last month with Tux’s story, both Midnight and Tux seemed to have started coming around  about the same time, a couple of months after the initial trio were making their daily appearances. So at this point, we had confirmed five “little” ferals, and all but Tux we were able to somewhat confirm as boys throughout that time. And like Tux, Midnight wasn’t ear clipped like the trio was, so we assumed that neither one had ever been caught. With his friendliness, we wondered if he just happened to be an outside cat that had expanded his territory now that there were no dogs on the street, or perhaps someone who had originally been a housecat and unfortunately became a lost boy. At one point, after I was able to get him used to coming into the house to eat, we tried looking up some lost and found sites on the web to see if we might be able to track down an owner, but of course being an all black cat, actually trying to determine if the pictures on the web were a match for Midnight was a difficult task. We actually did find one spot that might have been a possibility and had sent an e-mail though the site to the person who had listed their cat as missing, but unfortunately, never heard anything back, so here he remains.

Looking back at that first year now, I take an interesting note that even with five strays hanging around the street on a daily basis, that they kind of did their thing in shifts. The orange trio always tended to come around together, eat, do whatever it was they did as they wandered around for a bit before heading out, then Midnight and Tux would put in their appearances and do the same. So we really didn’t have to worry about any cat fights and such. Though one early morning I did hear a scrap take place and later on that day, discovered a cut on Tiger’s ear. So it appears he did end up getting into a tussle with either Tux or Midnight at that time. Probably Tux as Tiger seemed more wary of him than Midnight once we started having the three of them in the house on a more regular basis. Midnight didn’t hang around Tux like the trio hung around with each other, but they at least seemed on friendly terms – that is “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me type terms.” Although, once I started giving them wet food for the dinner time feeding, they actually ate together quite well.

Now during the first year of everybody coming around it appeared that Midnight generally kept to the junk yard between the business lot and the forest that ran along between the river and residential and business areas of our end of the town. We would see him most frequently coming from the field at the end of the street, and upon investigation found a couple of holes dug under the fence allowing small animals to come and go from the junk yard as they pleased. During the second year, all the cats seemed to come and go from that yard at one point. We could see trails in the grass from the field between the lot and our fence that lead from the hole under our fence to a hole under the fence to the junk yard. By this time Midnight had gotten used to the sound of my voice so I was able to call to him from over our fence and, if he was out in the lot, he would come running for feeding time. If he wasn’t, it only took a few minutes before he would pop up from the hole under the fence and be ready for food.

So it was during the second summer, with Tiger newly established in the house, that I thought I could at least get Midnight to make a conversion. So he and Tux also started getting the “good stuff” with dinner time, and like Tiger, I slowly acclimated them to coming to the back yard, then getting closer to the kitchen door. Eventually they were able to start coming in and get used to being in the house. Surprisingly though, despite his friendlieness, Midnight would come in, eat, and rest for a few hours but just didn’t want to stay in the house, so he would always beg to go out, and out he went until breakfast time. But he was quite generous with the “gifts” he would bring us during the time, and have him show up with a mouse in his mouth, or opening the door to find a present waiting for us started to become a weekly occurrence. He got quite used to the regular feeding time, so would always be waiting by the door in the mornings – during the winter, he would come in to eat, then head back out with me as I went to work. In the evenings, he would be waiting at the end of the street, and come running when I opened the door and called to him. One of these times, when I called and he came running into the house, I didn’t notice he had brought his own snack with him that day. So he came into the house, plopped himself in the middle of the living room and dropped a live mouse from his mouth. Of course that sent Shannon and the girls scrambling from the room in terror, allowing me to have a chuckle at their expense – after I scrambled to grab a paper towel and rescue the poor critter from his eventual doom. Midnight didn’t seem pleased with my decision, but all was forgiven once the food bowl made its appearance. Of course, it wasn’t too long afterwards that another gift was left on the front porch for me to clean up before the women of the household had to see the remains of a Midnight snack.

So that’s pretty much how the second year went with Midnight. Tiger had settled in quite comfortably. Tux was getting used to luxury of being an indoor cat, especially once winter rolled around, while Scruff, Patch, and Midnight continued their daily outdoor activities, which involved coming around more often and thusly encountering each other on occasion. This of course includes Oreo since we had identified him by this time as well. They seemed to generally keep their distances from each other, however it seems that Midnight or Oreo did eventually chase Scruff and Patch from their roost next door as this past year they were hanging around the business parking lot much more often and would be seen coming and going from the junk yard on occasion. They tended to favor playing on a back hoe that was parked next to the food bowl and home made shelter. Midnight was getting more comfortable in doors and, since this past winter, was more willing to stay in overnight and head out in the mornings when I went to work. He also started coming back in the afternoons by this time as well, just to hang out, grab a mid day snack, and maybe cat nap for an hour or two before heading out again.

One afternoon as we he was going out, he spotted a baby Blue Jay at the end of our walkway, and began to stalk it from the porch. I noticed Mama Blue Jay was hanging around up on the telephone and electrical wires up above the yard, keeping on eye on her baby. Fortunately, the youngster already knew how to fly, so was able to escape when Midnight made his move. Mama remembered him though, and Midnight began to pay the price afterwards. There were a couple of times when I happened to spot Midnight sitting under the neighbor’s pick up truck at the end of the street, and called him over to come in the house. As he got out into the open, away from any potential shelter, Mama Blue Jay would suddenly come sweeping down from wherever she had been perched and would dive bomb poor Mids until he finally made it to the porch.

By the time this past summer rolled around, the third since the ferals first appeared, I resigned myself to the fact that Midnight simply would be an Indoor/Outdoor cat, but not long before our annual vacation, there were a couple of instances where he never came back for dinner, which of course sent me to worrying about him until he finally reappeared in the morning to grab breakfast. I was also concerned that something could also possibly occur since there was a few days that Vultures had taken up roost in a tree at the edge of the field, and didn’t want him becoming someone else’s snack. There was also the issue of he and Tux occasionally getting into a sibling rivalry scrap every so often. It wasn’t one of those knock down, drag out cat fights, but just one of those wrestling type matches much like my brother and I got into as kids. Shannon’s father decided to keep him in the house for the week, just to make it easier on him with the feeding schedule since he would be taking care of the group while we were gone. We kept our fingers crossed and hoped for the best. Turns out, Midnight accepted it pretty well, and now he is finally a completely indoor cat – except for the occasional escape trick if we are not paying attention, and he happens to see Patch or Scruff outside of the door.

Not long afterwards, however, it must have been during one of these tussles that Midnight got a bite or scratch on his neck that then became infected. I noticed a slight bump forming just behind his left cheek. We kept an eye on it, but it just kept growing. I was hoping it would just resolve itself since, by this point, money was getting tight due to my medical bills, and the vet bills that started to accumulate because of Cookie. Unfortunately, after a few days, the abscess burst, and it was off to the vet Midnight went. Fortunately, a week of antibiotics cleared it up, and he’s been good ever since, but he did need to be a conehead for a week and it seems he is determined to pay us back for it. He has developed this annoying habit of jumping up on to our headboard in the wee hours of the morning when he wants our attention – particularly when he thinks it’s breakfast time. He also has gotten into the habit of clawing at the pictures and artwork by Abby we have (or had at this point) on the wall above the bed. A habit that Tux soon picked up on as well after we took away the mirror on our dresser that he had a tendency to paw at in the middle of the night. Despite this, Mids has settled in quite nicely, and doesn’t even beg to go out any more. Slowly but surely it seems he is starting to be a cuddler as well, often finding a favorite spot on the bed between Tiger and Tux to curl up into. So while it took longer than I would have thought, Midnight has become another official member of the family.

Tales of the Feral Cats: Tux's Story

Now that we have told the tale of the original trio, it has come time to move on to the next member of the clowder. By this time, we were fully in the grasp of the pandemic, but for our family work life continued almost as normal. It’s the unfortunate fact of living in a retail life. Plus we now had to juggle Erin doing remote learning for the remainder of her Freshman year of High School coupled with Abby’s day care being closed. If we could find positives during this time, it was the fact that we didn’t have to deal with a lot of traffic on the roads any more – it was almost like one of those post-apocalyptic movies, but the joy of having to deal with less idiots on the road was real. The other side benefit appeared to be an offshoot of that in that with less people out and about other wildlife began to roam around more often. For about a year after the pandemic started a few whitetail deer began roaming the street, and even nibbling on our bushes in the front yard. Even today, they still pop in now and again down by the field and the woods at the end of the street. We’ve had foxes and maybe even a coyote or two come around, which of course certainly made us nervous for the ferals’ safety. There was one time that I was investigating some noises outside by the field, and Tiger snuck out on Shannon when she opened the door to check on me. I was sweating bullets trying to coax him back into the house, but fortunately, he exercised the better part of valor and came back in for the evening.

I debated on whose tale I should tell this time around as it starts to get fuzzy on who made their presence known in exact chronological order, but I felt it might be more appropriate to go with who decided to become the next in line to join the indoor family following Tiger, and that would be Tux. Now in terms of who started wandering the street more and more around the spring and summer of 2020, it could be a toss up between Tux and Midnight. It seems they started coming around about the same time, a month or two after we fully identified the Three Amigos. The one difference was that Midnight was much more friendly (which we found out from the vet seems to be a tendency with black cats), while Tux was certainly more cautious and wouldn’t approach too closely, much like Scruff. We tended to notice Midnight more not only because of this, but he also seemed to hang out at the commercial business behind the house, along with Scruff and Patch. The three of them became such regulars back there that the employees created a make-shift shelter out of an Igloo cooler and also began to leave out food and water for the strays. But I think we can save more of that story for next time.

Yeah, let’s get back to Tux, shall we? Now one of the first things we noticed about Tux, and Midnight, were that they were not ear clipped, so we assume they were not caught by the local TNR program. So we thought they may have been more feral, even with Midnight’s friendliness, than the Trio. As for naming, well, it simply looked like Tux was wearing a tuxedo – he was mostly black, except for his paws, and a nice white patch that ran up from his belly to the bottom of his chin, which went slightly higher on the right side of his mouth. So, probably not the most original of names (I sometimes wish we named him Oreo instead – but we save that for Tux’s perhaps-brother), but it certainly fit. We didn’t even realize at the time that tuxedo was actually the official name for that pattern of coloring for cats. That I learned by another google search later on. But for the most part, we tended to see Tux and Midnight at the same time. It didn’t seem they quite hung out together like the Trio did, but they at least seemed to tolerate one another and would sometimes be hanging around the house at the same time, which of course usually was feeding time. While Midnight would come for a quick pet, Tux would always keep his distance and run off if any of us got too close. They weren’t showing up as often as the Trio were; by the late Spring into Summer, we were seeing the orange boys practically every day while we would see Midnight off and on – sometimes on the street and other times over in the business parking lot. Tux however seemed to be a once or twice a week at this time. He would come grab some kibble, maybe plop in the street for a few minutes then wander off again and we wouldn’t see him for a couple of days. But like the others, once he knew this was the prime spot to go for a regular meal, we could count on him making a regular appearance.

So over the summer, any time he came out to grab his breakfast, lunch, or dinner (since we were leaving the food out all day), I would take the opportunity when I could to go out and observe from a safe distance and talk to him. I did that for all the boys so they would get used to the sound of my voice and associate me with the good stuff they were there to get. All it takes is a lot of time and some patience. With Tiger, Patch, and Midnight, it was a lot easier as they seemed to trust me quicker than Scruff or Tux, but at least I was able to start developing that bond with them. Towards the end of the summer, Tux was comfortable enough that he would lounge about in the driveway or chill in the back yard. As the summer gave way to the fall, and I got the homemade shelters up and in place, it seemed Tux and the rest started hanging out around the house a lot more. I suspected that Tux and Midnight set up their overnight accommodations in the field behind the business parking lot where there were several trailers and other equipment about that could offer shelter from the storms and the predators. But once they discovered the cozy little hideaways I made, they started to make use of those. Tiger would take one I set up in the corner behind the shed. Another I kept in the front, at one point next to the porch which Patch had used a couple of times. I eventually made a total of four and shifted a couple of the shelters around trying to find the best spot for them to accommodate everybody. One I had on the other side of the shed from Tiger’s shelter, near the ditch they would use to get in and out of the back yard. Midnight seemed to favor that one. It wasn’t until one night, however, when I was bringing food out to put by the swing set that I finally discovered Tux had set up in the one by that corner. Naturally, he got spooked when I got close (not realizing he was in there), and took off running. But at least I knew he had found a nice cozy spot he could use near the spot where food was plentiful.

The only problem was that if cats get spooked while in the shelters, they’ll tend to avoid them. So I tried to be cautious when approaching any of them to avoid that scenario. Naturally, I still ended up spooking Tux a second time in that shelter no too long afterwards. That was the last time I was able to witness him using one of them. I eventually got the idea to rearrange the hay during the day, and then would check back on each shelter a few days to a week later to see if I could discover the telltale signs of someone sleeping in them. Sure enough, there would be a depression in the hay that indicated they were still being used. At least that put my mind at ease for the remainder of the winter, which was a good thing too. Since that first winter of 2020-2021 saw us get a good bit of snow. It at least made it easier to track the clowder’s comings and goings as I could see the imprints of little cat paws in the snow around the yard, and leading up to and away from the shelters.

We pretty much continued on this way throughout 2021 as at that point I was already working on getting Tiger to be more comfortable in the house, so the rest of the boys were still regulated to staying outdoors and just hanging around during the days, eating and catching mice at their leisure, many of which were left by our front door and walkway as signs of their affection. We would also occasionally see the remains of a bird every now and again, so had to take extra precaution with the Robins that would make nests in the trees around the driveway and back yard. There was more than one occasion we had to rescue a young fledgling that had fallen out of the nest. So when the summer of 2022 rolled around, and Tiger was celebrating his first year of being an indoor lap cat, I started to try to work on the next likely candidate. I thought maybe Patch and Scruff since they were more regular than any of the others, but it turns out that it was Midnight and Tux who became the unlikely volunteers.  At this point they seemed to hang around each other a bit more – not quite like Patch and Scruff, but enough that they would end up getting fed together. At this point I realized the drug that captures any outdoor cat is the almighty canned wet food. It was just the enticement that got Tiger inside, and it worked wonders on Tux and Midnight as well. Even so, I just never expected Tux to be as accommodating as he turned out to be.

It started one day in the driveway. Tux must have been especially hungry that day as he got fairly close to me as I brought the bowl of food out. I squatted down with the bowl to try to coax him closer, and to my surprise, he came close enough for me to reach out and give him a quick rub along the back. He scooted away immediately, but couldn’t resist the lure of that bowl of kibble. So I set it down where I was and he came over to eat. I didn’t want to push my luck any further, so just backed away and let him chow down. Of course, a day or two later, when I brought out a plate of the good stuff, I had him hooked. One whiff of that, and he no longer feared being so close to my presence. I would lead him to the back door, and give him a quick pet before setting the plate down on the grass next to our pebble walkway. Midnight soon caught on and would regularly join Tux in having a luxury outdoor dinner.

Once they were comfortable enough with that, I was able to do the same with I did with Tiger, bringing them closer towards the house and the back door which lead to the kitchen until such a time that I was able to entice them enough to take a few steps inside and eat from the plates on our kitchen floor – with the door still open right behind as a means of reassuring them that their escape route was open and available at any time. Over the course of the next couple of weeks I was able to lead them further and further into the kitchen until they were eating from the usual feeding spot, and I was able to keep the kitchen door closed. Tux especially was still quite a bit nervous, running for the door at any loud sound, but he eventually was able to understand that he was in a safe place, and would come in on his own for both breakfast (on my days off), and every evening for dinner. Like Tiger, he still wasn’t quite ready to stay indoors for a full night, but he no longer ate and ran either, he would actually stay a bit longer. It also helped that we had the sunroom completed that Spring, so they had a place that was like outdoors, without having to actually be outdoors to hang out.

It was at that point, that we noticed that both he and Midnight (who also hung inside a bit more often) would have coughing spasms on a regular basis. I worried that it might be something to do with heartworms, so I figured we needed to get Tux a vet appointment, just to make sure he was healthy, and to ensure that he could not increase the feral cat population while he was outside. So in late July of last year, I made an appointment for him and off he went to the Vet. Fortunately, it turned out that both Tux and Midnight didn’t mind being picked up and held, so it was easier to get him into the carrier and take him to the vet, instead of requiring a house call like Tiger did. Sure, he still wasn’t entirely happy about the experience, but it made my life a lot easier (and a bit cheaper). As it turned out, we lucked out again, as like Tiger, Tux was in pretty good health and there were apparently no worries about him procreating. He had either been neutered in the past, or had a condition that prevented him from being able to sire offspring. The coughing turns out to be cat asthma, which could require some potentially expensive treatment. Since it wasn’t immediately life threatening, we decided to wait on that and see if it became worse. In the meantime, he got his shots and home he came. The vet recommended we keep an eye on him for 24 hours to make sure there were no adverse reactions to the shots. So we decided to keep him inside for the next day, which he didn’t seem to mind too much. The day after, while I was at work, Shannon texted me in the afternoon to see if she could let Tux out, since he was sitting in front of the door, just staring at the outdoors. I told her it should be fine, so she slid opened the door and … Tux just sat there, looking at her. It seemed like he was quite comfortable where he was and really didn’t feel like going on a journey at that moment. So I came home, and Tux has been an indoor cat ever since.

Tux’s conversion has been the most surprising since he seemed to be the most standoffish and feral like of all the regulars. I never would have figured he would be one that we could get to be an indoor lap cat. But that’s exactly what he has turned out to be. Not too long after he made the decision to stay inside, I was sitting in the chair in the living room. I think I was watching TV or trolling people on a gaming forum through my phone, but Tux came over to the chair, gave me a quick glance, then hopped up and plopped himself into my lap. I was completely taken by surprise, since he hadn’t shown signs of that much affection up to that point in the slightest. But after a couple of rubs along his back, he buried his face in my stomach and purred himself contentedly asleep. So now, a year later, both he and Tiger have to contest with each other for lap time, and they both have their favorite spots to curl up on the bed at night. Never would have believed it in the proverbial million years, but he has been such a loving rascal that we can’t help but think our lives are a bit better because of him. Of course that is despite that rascal personality he has shown to have – like the time he snuck out on Erin when she opened the door to let Midnight in for dinner and he was gone most of the evening while Shannon and I were at Abby’s school for a parent/teacher conference. Or this annoying habit he started of standing up and clawing at the bedroom mirror in the middle of the night – every night – until we removed it from the dresser, only to promptly have him do it to the wall anyway … and the living room TV. But that’s our Tuxy boy and he certainly has made our lives interesting.