Mudpie

Ahhh, little Mudpie.  This little girl came to me from my parents.  Here I was the mother of 3 cats, doing the fostering and my parents called me to ask for my expertise and help with one of their cats.  Trust me I was not an expert at this time but only learning about the proper caring for these wonderful animals.  Apparently Mudpie has a scuffle with another cat and had a rather large wound in her back that had become infected filling with (ugh) puss.  

 

The call came in just before Thanksgiving so I went to their house to retrieve her and take care of her.  That was a challenge to say the least.  My parents had recently adopted a new Golden Retriever sometime after their first Golden had died of cancer and much to their cats dismay the puppy drove them crazy.  Hence Mudpie had taken to living in the rafters of my father’s garage and peeing in the garage around his antique cars.  So in order to get her I had to climb on top of the cloth’s washer then climb up into the rafters.  The climbing was the easy part, convincing her to come to me and then bring her down was a completely different task.

I brought her home, tended to her wound which one time was a very ugly deal.  Every evening I put her between my legs and had to massage the wound to remove the puss and then put Neosporin on it – YUCK.  Then one time while doing this it shot up onto my face, you’ve never seen anyone run so fast into the bathroom to wash off my face.  Mudpie though surprised me every time by purring the entire time I treated her. 

Just after Christmas, her wound healed, I told my parents she was ready to come home.  My father had a different idea.  Although he loved her he did not like her using his garage as a kitty litter box and worst of all he himself was dying of cancer.  I could not refuse his request that I let Mudpie come live with us. 

I don’t really know how long she lived but I think it was around 18 years.  After I bought my house every night when I came home from work she would be by the front door waiting for me.  And I called her my squirmy wormy since she would roll around when I reached down to pet her.      

Gorgeous George

He truly was gorgeous.  And he was a foster cat and feral cat.  He came to me in the early days of fostering cats and he was the first feral I had taken in.  The woman who introduced me to fostering had only been new at the cat rescue program herself and didn’t know much about the life of a feral cat.  Of course, I knew nothing. 

George went to adoptions every weekend and came back every weekend.  As time passed Sally told me that he would probably not get adopted since he was so anti-social with humans and they would have to put him back into one of the many feral communities in the South Bay area.  Oh, that did not sit well with me.  Although I knew there are hundreds of cats living in these communities I also knew their life span was much shorter than a domestic cat, not to mention he had now experienced the warmth of our home.  So I adopted him, now my 3^rd cat, along with the many fosters in the home.

As a feral cat George taught me about the personality of feral cats.  And I learned that unfortunately it is a very challenging prospect to adopt one.  I was told by the adoption women that based on the generation of the cat, how many generations of feral, they become very wary of humans and really only bond with other cats.  That is what I experienced with him.  

He spent most if not all his time either hiding or bonding with my other cats.  And although I truly loved him it was heart breaking that he was so reserved with me, coiling from affection.  He is deceased now but I will always love him and remember him.