When we moved into our home, we of course set up a stray cat feeding station and started trapping. Some of the cats went to adoptions, others were deemed feral and were fixed, ear tipped and released.
I first met Sam when we trapped him. Sam presented as feral. He refused to make eye contact, didn’t approach the front of the trap and besides growling and hissing, did not vocalize. Our rescue vet also thought he was feral and treated him as such.
Sam had a nasty wound on his belly (insides hanging outside where they shouldn’t) which was getting infected, so that was treated while he was being fixed We kept Sam confined for 10 days to recover and he always presented as feral.
We let him go. He hung around because of the above mentioned feeding station. About 6 months later, he started coming onto the back porch at dusk because he knew that’s when I was going to refill the food and water bowls, and maybe put some canned food out. Of course he started getting a bowl of canned food on the porch, I am a sucker, afterall.
Sam kept coming back and we started getting closer. When he made the choice to trust me, the changes happened almost overnight. I could touch his head, I could reach over his head to rub his back. I could even use both hands to rub his ears and face. This is not the behavior of a feral cat, so thinking that I would foster him for a while to calm him down for adoptions (I am all into denial about my cat addiction), I brought him inside and put him in the rescue room. He promptly hid.
Sam was oddly docile and submissive, he was terrified of my husband but if I held Sam for BB to pet, Sam didn’t fight or hiss, he just hunkered down and trembled. When we were alone, we would cuddle and he would love up to me and purr. He wanted eye contact, and if we were cuddling and I looked away, he would reach a gentle paw up to the side of my face to move so I was looking at him again. Calling Sam “that big orange guy we are fostering” was a bit unwieldy so he got named because we needed something shorter. We knew his new folks would change his name, so didn’t really put a lot of thought into it.
We then learned he was FIV positive. FIV cats can live with non-FIP cats as long as they are all fixed and get along, so that’s not a barrier to adoptions, and by this time Sam and BB got to be buddies.
We couldn’t take him to adoptions yet, because Sam was pulling hunks of fur out and was covered with awful scabs and open wounds. Nobody would want to adopt a cat who bled on their clothes, so I took him to the vet thinking we had brought a PTSD homeless guy into our home and a round of kitty Zanax would fix him right up.
Of course not! Nothing in that cat’s life has been easy or cheap. He’s got a fungal skin condition that can’t be cured, only treated with drops that cost 50 per month.
Only an idiot would adopt a cat like this knowing the expense involved. Its a good thing for Sam that BB and I are both idiots.
Sam is a wonderful cat. He’s been a great addition to our family, he gets along with the other critters and “helps” my BB read the paper every morning.
If someone would be so kind as to give me instructions on posting a pic here, I would happily exchange a kitty pic for the favor.
