(Previously posted under the title For the love of a Feral Cat (a True Story) on 9/26/2019
Apple Valley, California, is a desert. Man has tried to inhabit it and has succeeded for the most part. The city has a thriving population of feral cats. It happened as it does most times. Someone had cats they hadn’t had fixed and they moved away. I don’t know why they thought throwing their cats outside to fend for themselves was the right thing to do. But as cats will do when abandoned they do their best to survive. They make kittens.
Most of the cats in that particular neighborhood can be traced to one pair of abandoned cat. For those who don’t know, female cats can go into their first heat around 4 months old and over a lifetime one female can produce 180 or more kittens depending on litter sizes.
When you live there it’s easy for the feral cats to just become part of the scenery. You see them everywhere. And with the nature of cats some people just let theirs roam throughout the neighborhood so not every cat you see is a stray or feral. Some have homes. So it’s easy to assume they all do.
I was living in a very bad abusive situation at the time. I would comfort myself sometimes by watching the cats and one of the people I lived with would set food out for this Momma kitty and her kittens. We knew she was the neighbor’s cat that they’d abandoned but the people I lived with didn’t want to take her in, the best they would do was feed her. There is a pet limit in that city and you can also get in trouble and fined if you’re caught helping the feral cats because as far as I knew when I left there the city’s policy was if no one feeds them they will all starve out and fix the problem.
Well every four months or so “Momma” kitty would come back to our house parading around a new litter of little fluff ball kittens. She was a long hair so most of her kittens looked like little cotton balls. And for years I was dealing with so much of my own stuff I barely paid them any mind, like most people, they were just part of the scenery and fun to watch every once in a while.
Well, near the winter of 2014, Momma kitty brought another of her litters to show us. There were a lot of wild black cats in that area so most of her kittens were black. I noticed the bunch as I was going to feed my horse, about three or four of them I think it was. But what stood out was there was a tiny puff ball kitten that had brilliant silver-grey fur all over his body but his head was the darkest black. And he would sit there and watch me feed the horse. I had never seen a cat like this before and that caught my attention.
Later I would find out he likely had what is known as a fever coat, which is where the pigments in his fur weren’t correctly distributed due to his mother being sick or very stressed during pregnancy.
It was then I started to notice the ferals and their plight. I wanted to save this beautiful little creature. So I started the long slow process of trying to tame him by leaving him food.
Some people think the cats there are a nuisance, a pest, so they take measures to try to fend off the population in sometimes cruel ways. One of our neighbors hated the feral cats and even went to extremes as to getting a dog that hated cats in an attempt to keep them out of his yard.
So this little fever-coated feral kitten got dubbed Floof. Not the most majestic of names but it was what we sometimes called the dog I had at the time, Aspen, due to her fluffy coat. And this kitten was fluffy. I didn’t want everyone in the neighborhood aware that I was calling one of the feral cats to eat.
For the next two years I fed him and watched him grow from a tiny kitten into a beautiful long coated black tom cat. I would feed him, talk to him, try to coax him closer. Tried to tame him so I could bring him inside and free him from this life.
Mister Floof was not meant for being a tom cat. He didn’t seem interested in the females until late and he had no aggression in him for fending off the other neighborhood tom cats. But he would not tame. I don’t know what wisdom he had gained the hard way that made him distrust all humans so much but he would never let me within two feet of him before he would run away, even after 2 years of feeding him.
Well about the year and a half mark Momma kitty brought by yet another batch of kittens, this time three little black and white ones. She lost one almost right away but the other two stuck around as they grew and the people I was living with named the female of the pair Cleopatra because she was really friendly and would come up to the people, because by that time Momma kitty had realized she could get food and water from these people and they didn’t hurt her so she taught her later kittens that so they could survive.
At four months old, Cleopatra became pregnant with kittens of her own. Just a little baby herself, lost and alone and pregnant. So she did the only thing she could think of, she came to the humans for help. She continually tried to come inside to have her kittens and she was continually driven off by the people I lived with. I tried to ignore the problem because I was barely in the position to support Floof and he was the one I wanted to save.
Cleopatra decided I was the one to save her too. She had her two kittens in my doghouse right outside the back door so I would have to pass her and them to get outside to feed my horse.
Life is incredibly cruel to the ferals in that area. It’s a desert. In the summer the heat is unbearable and no living creature should have to live out in it, especially not long coated cats. There’s not a lot of local wildlife for them to hunt and survive on. They live frightened and starving for the most part, fighting each other for scraps of food the people in the neighborhood leave out. At that time there was no TNR or rescue projects that were willing to help them and the local animal shelter refused to deal with cats and would just fine people they found helping. Kittens often fell prey to the massive amount of carrion birds that lived there, the massive ravens that scavenged everything they could to survive.
I’d cleaned up more than my share of dead kittens left behind by the birds. Once I found only the fur from a kitten’s face, still face shaped, in my horse’s pen, like the kitten had been scalped by the birds.
Cleopatra is a wise cat. She knew that deep down I wanted to help them and I would not be able to ignore her and her kittens in trouble. For the first week I resisted. I would feed and water her but I refused to bring her inside. I thought I was helping enough. Then one day I opened the blanket I’d had hung over the door to give them safety and privacy and the tiny little grey and white kitten, who I named Dapper, came toddling toward me, eyes opened for the first time, and mewed at me, unafraid. All I could see was that adorable little kitten being the next one I had to clean up from the yard after the birds had taken it.
I knew I couldn’t save them all. But I also knew it was within my power to save these three. It was difficult, due to my abusive situation, but I managed to talk the people I was living with into letting me bring the three of them inside. It was through helping those three, getting them fixed, and shots and introducing them to the life of spoiled house cats that I realized how the ferals lived.
Cleo is so grateful to be a housecat. She has never once forgotten how hard it was out there, how scary. She taught her kittens to come to the humans because she knew the humans could save them.
There was still the issue of my beloved Floof though. I could not get him to tame down enough to bring him inside. So while I still really wanted to save him I settled for feeding him and I took in Cleo and her two kittens Dapper and Secret instead. Floof would still come and sit by the plants outside my window and peer up at me from behind them, watching me.
My situation deteriorated to the point where I had to leave. I wasn’t just leaving the house. I was leaving the city, the state. I was moving clear across country to get away from all of the bad things I was living with. And I was taking Cleo and her kittens with me. The friends who let me come stay with them also welcomed my cats and they live in the country where there isn’t a pet limit so they told me to bring what I needed knowing these creatures were now my children and I felt very responsible for them. I hadn’t brought them in and saved them just to toss them back outside into the terrible situation I’d rescued them from.
Floof was the only other feral I had really supported over the years and the only one that looked to me for help. But I knew he was wild. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to catch him and if I did if he would ever be happy indoors. So the original plan was to leave him behind because I didn’t think it possible to bring him with, I already had four cats to try to bring (Cleo and her kittens, and I have an older cat, Cali, who had been with me 13 years then, who I had gotten from a family member when she was no longer a ‘cute kitten’ and got thrown away).
About a week and a half from when my escape was planned I was woken in the middle of the night. Floof, who had a very distinct meow (scratchy like a gremlin), was crying underneath my window. I looked out of it and saw him hunched there. I went outside to find him hurt and crying under my window and two other tom cats trying to attack him. I drove them off out of the yard and rescued him but he still wouldn’t let me near him so once I’d chased the other two off he slunk off to hide and nurse his wounds. At the time he had finally won a tiny little female cat of his own, a little black fluff ball like him that was either his sister or one of his own kittens, and he was doing his best to try to protect her from the other toms but he just didn’t have it in him to fight back well enough to keep her. So he was hurt and defeated and he’d lost his companion to the other toms.
It was then I realized this cat would die if I left him. I had been responsible for him for two years and it was my responsibility to save him because no one else would. The people I lived with didn’t like him, they liked the other ferals. I realized he would die alone and in pain, perhaps hit by a car, or starving, or from infection from fighting with the other tom cats.
I couldn’t leave him. With the permission of both the person driving me out to Minnesota and the friend I was coming to live with I hatched a plan to catch Floof and bring him with me.
It almost didn’t work. Floof was a wily cautious cat, it’s how he’d stayed alive so long. I bought a live trap and baited it with wet cat food. I caught five other cats. Floof would just sit there at a distance and watch them get caught then slink off. I was starting to think I would have to leave him anyway, time was running out.
I decided to bait the trap with something a little stronger. I put out a can of tuna that night and prayed that he would take the bait.
He finally did. He went into the trap and I pulled the trigger and he fought like a hellion when he realized he was trapped. I didn’t have a lot of time left so as soon as I trapped him I called to set up an appointment to get him fixed and get him his vaccinations and a vet check so I could bring him with me. He spent the night in the garage in the cage, covered so he would stay calm.
In the morning I took him to the vet and they sedated him right away because he was at that point a very displeased feral (though he was never mean or aggressive, he kind of just made a howling displeased demon noise at us as he hunched in the cage). So I went home to wait, let the vets do their thing.
I got a call not too long later with two important news items. One, they’d tested Floof because he was feral and told me he was positive for FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus – the cat form of aids) and asked if I wanted to continue treatment or just have him put down on the spot. They explained it could possibly be passed to any other cats I had, but Cali had been an indoor/outdoor cat that had gotten into scraps with the ferals already and I figured since Cleo and her kittens were from the same colony it was worth the chance. Then the vet took a deep breath and told me that Floof was cryptochid (which is an undescended testicle) and they would have to do deeper exploratory surgery to find it to neuter him, which would cost an additional quite large fee.
I told them to do it anyway. I wasn’t ready to give up on Mister Floof yet. So they did the surgery, he came out just fine, and I took him home and set him up in the large dog kennel I’d bought to house him until we could move.
And when it came time to leave I did bring him with me. All the way from Sunny California to Minnesota.
After a while I let him come out of his kennel (which was his safe zone in his mind) and be loose with the other cats in my home. He never got along particularly well with the others because he was so timid but he came around to the life of a spoiled house cat and for the most part they left him alone to his own devices and he left them alone.
It took another year for me to be able to get close enough to pet him.
Once he finally trusted me enough to let me pet him it was like I had given him the world. His eyes lit up and he discovered he loved being touched. He loved being loved. From that day forward he was the sweetest most loving cat you would ever know. Not just to me, to everyone. He craved love and attention. He would lay there and let you pet him for hours, soaking it up like he was making up for the three years he spent lost and alone.
It took him about three more months to learn how to play, to relax enough to settle into being a spoiled king of a cat. To realize that he was safe and loved now and he would never again be scared and alone.
While I love all of my cats, he was my pride and joy. I told his story to everyone I could and I now try to encourage everyone to help support the feral cats in their plight by telling them the story of this poor lost little creature who only wanted to be safe and loved.
Last night, September 25th, 2019, at 9:07 pm my little angel Floof passed from this world. He was only four and a half years old. His passing was violent and sudden, he couldn’t get up and walk, he was wobbly, then he collapsed, seized, and couldn’t breathe. Within ten minutes he’d taken his last breath and escaped this world. I had no time to do anything to help him except pet him as he went and tell him he was loved.
Oh he was loved. I only hope he knows how much my heart bleeds from his passing. This poor lost little kitten who survived so much in his short life to finally come to rest as a king, safe in his bed with a human that protected and loved him, cuddled up to his favorite toy that he’d finally come to learn to play with.
My only comfort in this time is that I gave him the best life I could in the short time I was able to. He died safe and loved, a king among cats. Not scared and alone and forgotten like most of the ferals will. He is survived by his half sister Cleopatra, his nephews Secret and Dapper, and an untold amount of relatives who still live lost and alone back in California.
The only difference between a feral cat and a beloved house cat is that the ferals have been abandoned by humans and forgotten. They have been thrown into environments they never should have to handle alone and expected to just adapt or die. Cats are extremely resilient, and they can adapt and perhaps even thrive in feral colonies with the help of humans. Without our help they die, scared and alone, often in terrible pain from battles with other cats, infections, diseases or ran over.
Mister Floof taught me that all they want is what every creature wants. A safe place to live, food, and someone to love them. They all need that. The angry dangerous ferals you come across are most likely cats that have given up hope and are doing the only thing they know to survive.
So I tell this story, with my heart breaking, and tears pouring down my face. In the hopes that it will reach people’s hearts. Maybe make you look at the cats around you differently. If I can save even one more life with this story then it’s all been worth it.
Please support your local cat rescues and the Trap/Neuter/Release programs and the feral colonies in your area. The people who help ferals and strays suffer this pain every day as they try to help the forgotten and helpless. Every life matters. Every single one.
If this story has touched you please find a local rescue to donate to, even if it’s just a tiny amount.
In loving Memory of Mister Floof – Majestic Lion – King of Ferals – Precious angel gone too soon from this world. The world was cruel and didn’t deserve you, my Floof. Fly on angel wings as you deserve.