First thing’s first this month: Cookie is doing good, though we are fighting a major flea infestation with the clowder right now. Most likely brought in during the times over the last year that we let Oreo into the sunroom, and enhanced by Cookie’s arrival. The old guy is hanging in there, though, and as always, any donations towards his fundraiser so we can continue to pay off his medical bills and afford his ongoing care is greatly appreciated!
Moving on, a couple of things that somehow slipped my mind during Tiger’s story last month, starting with that unusual gait of his. It gives him a tendency to “Flop and Plop” or “Plop and Flop” as we interchangeably call it. Instead of that graceful, flowing movement from a standing to a laying position you would imagine cats to have, Tiger pretty much, well plops down and flops over. It’s more or less like a toppling over with style, though he hits pretty hard, so we’re glad the house is mostly carpeted to avoid any unnecessary bruising the boy would give himself. Tiger is also the only cat I have ever had who not only tolerates belly rubs, but rolls over like a dog and demands them during petting sessions. Once in a great while, if we do it long enough, that instinct will kick in and grabs and mouths our hand, but that’s rare. We kind of think he may have been raised by a pack of dogs at one point, because it’s just something I never witnessed myself in a cat.
With that out of the closet, we can now move on to Tiger’s two siblings, with whom he comprises the original trio of street wanderers that came into our lives. Thus we have Patch and Scruff. Of course we assume all three are siblings, because … well why not? At least in the case of Patch and Scruff, it seems most probably true. They share the same unusual eye color which is more of a greyish green, and have been pretty much inseparable over the course of the last three and a half years. Like I mentioned in Tiger’s Story, we aren’t really sure at this point who we spotted first, or who was who whenever we saw one of them wandering around in the early days. But through our observations, we were able to finally see enough features to distinguish the three of them apart. Tiger was the more timid soul, without any major distinguishing markings on his orange and white fur. Patch, like Tiger, favors more of the orange hue to his fur, but also has a distinct white patch on his chest and more white on his paws, hence his name. Scruff is more tan in color, like my good ole Willy was. Scruff also tended to look a little more worse for the wear, his fur more ruffled and less groomed that Tiger or Patch, and more of an unkempt appearance I would call it. In essence, he was a scruffy looking street cat.
This was when I also noticed that all three had the tips of their left ears missing. I had noticed Tiger’s first since we was more willing to get up close to me, and it wasn’t long before he came running for pettings every day after I got home from work. But as Patch and Scruff got a little more trusting, and wouldn’t just scurry off when I came by, I was able to see that they were missing their tips as well. When it was just Tiger, I had thought it may have been the scar of an old fight, but when I confirmed it was all three of them, and it was the same ear, my curiosity was piqued. So after a quick search of the Internet, I found out about TNR programs, and how they would snip off the tip of an ear to give a visual clue that a cat had already been trapped by the program and undergone the examination and neutering, so that they wouldn’t be caught again, and could go on with life as usual – minus the ability to make more street cats.
While Tiger is timid, he certainly showed more interest and bravado, I would say than either Patch or Scruff when it came to interacting with me, and so it became much easier to gain his trust and finally get him in the house than either of the other two. Patch and Scruff would always keep more of a distance, even after a summer of feedings. At that point, the feedings were becoming a wee bit interesting as we would fill up a dog bowl of kibble in the mornings and I would return home from work to find it empty in the early afternoons. Of course, it seemed natural at the time, considering there were three cats picking from the bowl, but it didn’t take long to figure out that we had other critters taking advantage of the offerings as well. It was the birds by day, and raccoons at night, with the occasional opossum and skunk sneaking in every once in a while as well. It got to the point where we had to chase off the raccoons not long after sunset. They then got in the habit of waiting until after I had refilled the bowl in the morning as I left for work in the wee hours.
That lead us to moving the bowl around quite a bit to try to find the most protected spot. For a while, it seemed we had found some protection from the birds by moving the bowl to under the elevated deck of the swing set in the back yard, but it wasn’t fool proof once the birds learned of the new location, and of course it did little to discourage the other wildlife. Ants started to be a problem as well as I would often come home to find a colony of them going after whatever scraps were left. But Patch and Scruff seemed to take it all in stride, and they seemed to be trusting me just a little be more as the summer began to wane. There was one point where I brought the bowl out for dinner one day while Patch and Scruff were waiting by the swing set and put it down near the slide while I just sat there, calling for them. Patch finally got enough gumption (or hunger pains) to finally come over and start eating from the bowl, just out of arm’s reach. But it was progress. Scruff not a chance of course. I had to walk a couple dozen paces away before he felt it was safe enough to begin eating.
Poor Scruffy, to this day, he is still too skitterish to let me come close, but I am gaining his trust little by little. Compared to where he was three years ago, and now, where he will almost come close enough to touch every once in a while, it’s a big difference. But it seems he hasn’t had the easiest of lives. He got his name because he always looked like he had just gotten roughed up in a back alley, but at one point it also looked like he had gotten an eye infection in his left eye. For a few days, it looked a little swollen, not unlike the time half of Tiger’s face got puffy from what I assume was a bad encounter with a bee he was probably chasing one summer day. The swelling eventually went away, but the eye never looked right (no pun intended there), and there always seemed to have a squinty eyed pirate look about it. Even to this day, I can definitely see a difference in the pupils, where the bad eye doesn’t constrict in sunlight like the good eye does. I wouldn’t doubt that he might even be partially blind in the eye at this point. He also gets a swelling in his upper lip on that side at well on occasion. It doesn’t seem to affect his ability to eat, but it’s just another thing that poor Scruffy has to deal with on a regular basis. He does remind me a lot of Willy, who also had his share of issues for the 18 years or so I had him.
That was pretty much how the summer and fall went with Patch and Scruff. They would wander by whenever they were getting hungry and sometimes would even hang out a bit – playing and chasing each other around the yard. They did make one of the trees in the back corner of the yard their personal scratching post. Once in a while, we would find Patch chilling out on the deck of the swing set, from which the slide started, and was only reachable via a series of wood slats that formed a steep climbing ramp enhanced by those plastic stone things you see with indoor rock climbing walls. They certainly knew they had a safe place to hang around. However, I was starting to worry about how things would go over the winter. At this point, we really didn’t know how old any of the cats were. Just from their initial size, I estimated that they were at least full grown, they were certainly older than that cute, but awkward, teenager age and size. So I figured they were at least a couple years old at that point, and had seen at least one winter out on the streets, but I wanted to make sure they had more than just food and water, especially since the winters seemed to be getting colder around here.
So another Google search taught me how to make some cheap and easy cat shelters to put out around the yard to give the guys some shelter from the storms and the impending winter. I ended up making two to start off with, figuring that Patch and Scruff could at least share one of them. The only question was where the best spot around the house would be for them to go. Since, at the time, it seemed they were mostly hanging out under the stand alone deck of the neighbor’s, I could put one in the grove of bushes and trees that separated their property from our driveway, which is also where we usually put the food. The other I put out behind in the corner of the fence behind the shed, since they would also use an old groundhog access ditch to get under the fence and back to the fenced in industrial property behind our other neighbor’s house, which seemed to be the other regular spot for them, and the rest of the neighborhood wanderers.
Tiger took to the shelters right away and throughout that first autumn and winter, would see him regularly coming from the direction of the shed where the more secluded shelter was located. After Midnight and Tux started coming around on a more regular basis, I built two more shelters to ensure there were enough for everyone. At first, I ended up with two behind the shed, the one in the grove, and finally decided to put the fourth next behind the flowers and bushes of our front porch since, it seemed a little secluded there as well, and we had moved the food bowl there as well to try to keep the birds at bay. A couple of the shelters moved from time to time as I ended up startling Patch in the one by the front porch one day in the winter. That one I ended up moving to the corner of the yard near the swing set, and naturally ended up startling Tux a couple of times in the morning when he was in that one. But that at least gave me comfort knowing that all five of the cats were using them as some point over the winter months.
I don’t remember exactly when it was, but it was at some point during the winter that we didn’t see Patch as much as Scruff, and eventually it got to the point where we didn’t see him at all. This was very unusual since we almost never saw them apart when they came around. I always imagined that Patch was the older brother, looking after his younger sibling and giving him the comfort and protection Scruff needed. So I was quite worried when the days turned to weeks, and the weeks eventually added up to a couple of months through the course of December to February where we did not see one sign of Patch. Being street cats, you always have to wonder what kind of fate can befall your feline friends. I think it was that year that we had a couple of good snowfalls as well, and those little paw prints in the snow leading to and from the shelters was comforting evidence, but without visual proof of the cat in question, my mind always tended to fear the worst. I felt like I failed Patch and Scruff by not being able to care for and save the both of them, and I wondered how Scruff would get along without having his brother there to protect him.
Relief came one day in March, not too far from the year anniversary when we had first seen the strays and started putting food out for them that Patch made a reappearance on the front porch, looking for the bowl of food. At that point it had been about three, if not almost four, months since we had the last confirmed sighting of the little runaway. But he was back with the neighborhood family once again. I still wonder where he was and what he was doing all that time. I kinda figure he had to be coming by at some point, it’s just that we weren’t there to see him, but we’ll never really know for sure. Naturally, it wasn’t long after that Scruff seemed to pull a disappearing act of his own. I don’t think it was quite as long though. For the most part, ever since then, both boys have been making daily appearances. With rare exception, they’ll be out there in the wee hours of the morning waiting for breakfast, and then be back after I get home for work, eagerly awaiting dinner.
Their home base seems to have shifted over the last couple of years. They stilled seemed to be keeping house under the neighbor’s deck for a while after Tiger started staying inside with us, but I think Midnight, or one of the others ended up chasing them out of that spot as they started appearing more regularly from the groundhog ditch under the fence in the back yard. We would often see them roaming and playing out in the parking lot of the business behind our house. They, and Midnight, were such regulars there that the workers eventually started leaving out bowls of food and water for them every day, and one even converted an old igloo chest cooler into a makeshift shelter for them. So it seems they tend to hand out around the fenced in industrial yard for the most part nowadays, but also spent a lot of time lounging around on our front porch. Some days they are hanging out there all day.
The best news is that within the last couple of months, and partly in thanks to being home for two months during the Spring because of my heart attack, I was able to spend a little more time with the pair, and gained Patch’s trust enough to let me pet him. So now, when the food bowl comes out, he’s there waiting for some rubbings, and there’s days in the morning where I’m late because he insists on getting a good-bye pat on the head before I head off for work. They both did give us a scare last month when they stopped showing up for almost a week. We still have no idea why, but I suspect it might be because they ended up getting spooked by the new neighbor’s puppy while they were out there one day. They have another access point to the industrial yard in the neighbor’s house which they use now since Oreo has set up his fiefdom in our back yard, so the dog was probably out there when they were making a crossing one day and got chased off. Ever since then though, they are here faithfully every day. My hope is to eventually be able to get them inside and get them into a foster home that will keep them together, as they should be. But right now, with the addition of Cookie, and the fleas, we have quite the gaggle to deal with as it is. But hopefully, sooner rather than later, Patch and Scruff can finally feel what a joy it is to be safe and sound indoor cats. The fact that we were able to convert Tux and Midnight gives me great hope. But those are stories for another time.
