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.