Before I get started, I need to do some begging and pleading for one of the fellas that will be part of this ongoing series in the blog. Cookie is the latest addition to our clowder. He’s a senior cat with some health issues. Unfortunately, due to a couple of expected large bills, and then a few unexpected ones, our financial situation has made it difficult to be able to take on more expenses for the kitties. So I have started a GoFundMe to help us take care of Cookie’s medical needs. Please help us out in any way you can with a donation, or via picking up some merchandise in our Design by Humans store. Thank you!
Sometimes fate has a funny way of working things out. Feral cats and dogs can be found in pretty much any community. Over the years in our little neck of the woods, we would see a few street wanderers out and about on occasion. However, they knew to stay well enough away from our cul de sac due Marley and the dogs of a couple of our neighbors. But within a relatively short span of time, the neighbors either moved, or the dogs passed on, like our beloved buddy, Marley. Not seven or eight months later, in the late vestiges of winter and early peeking of Spring 2020, we noticed some new neighbors wandering the ‘hood. They came in the form of three orange tabbies. It seemed that they made their appearance at just the right time, as just a short while later, the world changed.
It began with the occasional glimpse of an orange tabby walking around the bushes around the houses on the street, and in the copse between our driveway and the neighbor’s house to the left. After careful observation, it appeared that they may have been taken up residence over the detached deck the neighbor had in the backyard. Underneath was the perfect spot to hide and stay relatively dry from the rain, and cool from the sun. At that time, Hershey was the last of the pet family left for us. Willy and Flash, my cats from before I met my future wife, has passed away a few years beforehand, shortly after Hershey was brought to us by our then brother-in-law on my wife’s side. She was a runt, at the end of her kitten years he had found in the warehouse where he was working at the time. She was a small package with a big attitude. Anyway, we made use of Marley’s food bowl, and Hershey’s spare kibble and started putting food out for the tabby just on the edge of the copse. A few days later, upon checking through the kitchen window, we saw the tabby at the food bowl, chowing down on the morning meal. After a minute or so, we finally noticed another face peeking out from one of the bushes. It appeared that there were not one, but two orange tabbies to contend with.
The first tabby was christened Tiger by our then 5 year old daughter, Abby, because he looked like, well a miniature Tiger. The other tabby we named Patch as he had a large patch of white fur on his chest. It wasn’t long afterwards, on a day we say Patch at the bowl that yet another tabby made his presence known. This one was more tan than orange, and reminded me a lot of Willy with his coloring and what turned out to be skittishness. He got the name of Scruff because he looked a little more worse for the wear than Tiger and Patch, like he had been roughed up a bit. Over the course of the next few weeks, we noticed that Patch and Scruff tended to hang out together more so then either one of them with Tiger. We also noticed they had the most striking greyish-green colored eyes, so made the assumption that they were brothers. Tiger’s eyes were a piercing yellow, but he could very well be from the same brood as well, but Scruff and Patch certainly seemed to have more of a close bond and relied on each other much more. Tiger also seemed the more daring of the trio, tending to stick around a bit longer to investigate us when we were outside, and tending to come a little closer than either Patch or certainly Scruff were willing to venture. It was then I noticed that Tiger had the tip missing from his left ear. At first I thought he just had been on the wrong end of a cat fight in his past, until closer observations of Patch and Scruff revealed the same thing. I thought it was a very odd coincidence that all three would have a tip missing from the same ear, so did a little investigating on the Internet and learned about the concept of TNR – Trap, Neuter, and Release, which is a program that will trap street cats to be taken to a vet for a health check and neutering/spaying. Afterwards, they are returned to their home turf. It aids in keeping the stray cat population in check, and helping to ensure that the kitties remain as healthy as possible. The “ear tipping” is an easy means of identifying which cats have already undergone the process so they are not trapped again.
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| My First Two - Gandalf and Tigger |
As Spring crawled along, and we drifted our way through the early weeks and months of the pandemic, another stray made his presence known. This one was an all black tabby. He also seemed much friendlier than the orange trio as we noticed him going up to several workers in the parking lot of the business that butted up against our backyard fence. He would also approach us and let us pet him when he was wandering down our street. It seemed to us that Midnight would be a fitting name, plus Abby’s first choice of Shadow had already been taken up by another one of my previous cats from years before. By that point we assumed that word was getting around the Meowing Chain that there was a good, safe spot to get some grub as along with Midnight a black and white short haired tabby also started showing up on a regular basis. He received the name of Tux due to the fact that he looked like he was wearing a tuxedo. It wasn’t until later that we found out that Tuxedo was also the name for that particular coloring of domestic short hair, but the name was stuck by that point. Occasionally, we would see a few other stragglers – a tortoise shell we named Brownie, a grey and white short hair we called Stormy, and another all black tabby we called Ebony. But they weren’t as regular as our pack of five, and over the last couple of years, we still only catch the occasional glimpse of Brownie every couple of months or so. Within the last few months, a black and gray striped tabby started showing up at feeding time every day. We started calling him Smokey. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen him in the last few weeks as one of the neighbor had their daughter’s family move back in which included two large dogs. So since Smokey tended to come from the direction of their house, across the street from ours, we think the dogs have been keeping him away.
But the stories I will be relating here over the course of, well however long I keep at it in this blog, will be focusing in on what we have considered the six “lifers” of the street. The ones who have been around the longest that we have seen, and are the ones we see on pretty much a daily basis. Which reminds me, we still have one left to introduce – that would be Oreo. He was the last of this six to make an appearance, and it took a while for us to realize that he was indeed a sixth kitty. You see, he also was a Tuxedo who happened to have his coat pattern very similar to that of Tux, so we are pretty certain we confused him with Tux in the early going. It wasn’t until I started paying closer attention to their faces, and the back of their legs that I finally spotted some differences between Tux and Oreo. The former had a more angular face with a stretch of white running up the left side of his chin to his mouth. Oreo’s face is much rounder, with no white around his face. I was also able to discern that Oreo had more white running up his right hind leg, with a nice black spot on the back. Tux’s hind legs just blend from white to black with no spots.
And so that’s how our clowder of street cats came to be. It began not a moment too soon or too late, I think. Because, over the last three years, I think they saved us, and me in particular, as much as we have done to save them. And so, this is where our tales will begin. I hope you all will enjoy these stories. And please, if any of you can help us out with the latest addition, Cookie, with a donation it would be much appreciated.
