In Memoriam: Nuts and Outdoor Cat

This winter we lost Nuts on December 20, 2011 and Outdoor Cat on January 9, 2012. Both were older with serious health issues so we knew it would happen eventually, but it was still heart-breaking. Nuts was my husband's cat, and she adopted him some thirteen years ago when a friend of his found her as a stray. When she was little she would run around like a crazy cat, and his young son said "This cat is nuts!" and the name stuck. She was the reason we kept a "Beware of the Cat" sign by the front door because she hissed at everyone except my husband and once chased our former landlord's dog out of HER yard.

Outdoor Cat was much shyer, and when we bought our house, we did not even know that she was living under our deck until our neighbor told us she had been there for some years. No one seemed to remember how long, but the previous owners used to leave food out for her, and everyone told us she was "not very friendly." I have described in previous blog posts how Outdoor Cat went through the Wisconsin Humane Society's Trap Neuter Return program and ended up coming indoors.

She adopted me and slept on my side of the bed at night, while Nuts slept on my husband's side. Often the humans would end up squished together in the middle third of the bed acting as a buffer zone between the two cats, who would hiss at each other on sight. Fortunately since they were older female cats, they mostly pretended the other cat was not there.

Our remaining cat Ruby would like you to know that we do not need another cat. Ruby is enjoying having full command of the humans' attention and having access to rooms that had previously been the other cats' territories. She distributes her fuzziness equally between our laps.

Outdoor Cat After One Year Indoors

This time last year we brought Outdoor Cat indoors for the winter in advance of a snow storm. (She had spent who knows how many previous winters living outside, which in Wisconsin is pretty cold going. You can see all the related posts here.)

Once she figured out that she could stay inside, she pretty much became an indoor cat (though we still call her "Outdoor Cat"). Occasionally she will ask to go out, and we'll open the front door for her. She sit on the porch and look around, nibble some grass, and maybe explore the bushes, but about 5-10 minutes later she's at the door waiting to be let back in. Like all cats, she is trying to train us humans. As this video shows, her hardest task is getting us to follow her to her empty food dish (and she will put up with annoying baby talk to get what she wants).

Now that cold weather has set in, I sometimes wake up in the wee hours to find I'm wedged in between my husband on one side, Outdoor Cat on the other, and Nuts the 16-lb. cat crushing my feet. Sometimes all three of them are snoring. (The third cat Ruby prefers the living room couch.)

As I type this, we're under a winter storm warning. Outside, the wind is howling, the snow is gusting, and the windchill is 6°F (-15°C). Outdoor Cat is sleeping in front of the heat grate on my office floor (amidst the piles of papers seen in the video - I'm still cleaning!) And when I get up from my chair, she will probably run straight to her food dish in the next room and look at me expectantly!

Outdoor Cat Update

This past week was the one-year anniversary of Outdoor Cat going through the Wisconsin Humane Society's Trap-Neuter-Return program. I last reported in December that she had moved inside for the winter, and now that spring is here, she still prefers to stay inside. She'll still ask us to open the front door, but then she'll usually only stay around the front porch for awhile, eating some grass and watching the world. As soon as the neighbors come out, she runs back inside.

It's interesting how many typical indoor cat habits she now has, such as scratching at the bathroom door if it's closed and sleeping next to my chair in my office. Occasionally if I don't get up at 6 a.m., I'll find her sitting on the bed beside me, staring very earnestly at me. We no longer close her in a separate room when we go out, and for the most part the three cats tolerate each other, though there's always the occasional hissing match when they cross paths. At 6:10 this morning I had both Nuts & Outdoor Cat walking over me, within a foot of each other without hissing because they were both intent on getting me out of bed to feed them. And BOTH had food in their dish but wanted me to pet them and move the food around for them before they would eat. (Naturally my husband slept through this ;o)

Next step will be moving OC's litter box down into the basement with the others so I can reclaim the guest/sewing room!

Outdoor Cat's Big Adventure

I'd been deluding myself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, Outdoor Cat (above) had been spayed, but on the morning of May 8, our neighbor reported that Outdoor Cat had been performing naughty acts on our front porch with Other Outdoor Cat (right). On the advice of Julie (kisluvkis), I attended the Wisconsin Humane Society's orientation for Community Cat Caregivers last Saturday, since their Trap-Neuter-Return program is now available for feral cats outside of Milwaukee County as well.

Then this week, since I'm working at home all week, I began the process of Outwitting Outdoor Cat. I bought a wildlife trap on Saturday (my first visit to Tractor Supply Co.) and left it on the front porch draped in a sheet, with the door locked open so she could get used to its presence. My initial plan was to trap her on Sunday night and take her in for spaying Monday morning, but apparently she overhead me saying this and did not show up for dinner on Sunday. She reappeared on Monday morning just late enough that I wouldn't have been able to take her in for surgery (since she had to be dropped off between 8-9 a.m.). I gave her a little bit of breakfast but at Julie's suggestion I withheld food for the rest of the day. In the evening, I put warm sardines in the trap, but she pointedly sat by the front door (next to the open trap) waiting for me to bring her food in her dish.

We did our best to ignore her pathetic gaze, and around 10 p.m., my husband reported that the trap door was shut. But it turned out to be Other Outdoor Cat, the male who apparently wasn't as cautious where sardines are concerned. (Should have taken a picture of him.) I'm still convinced OOC lives somewhere else because he looks well-fed (could be more wishful thinking on my part) so I let him go and re-set the trap. (His time will come for the snip, I'm sure.) When we went to bed a little before 11 p.m., Outdoor Cat had returned to stare in the front door waiting for dinner. At one point she sniffed at the trap, but didn't go in. I woke up at 1 a.m. and the trap was still open, and O.C. was nowhere to be seen. Indoor cat Nuts woke me up at 3 a.m., and lo and behold! The trap was shut! I half expected to find Other O.C. in there again, but instead there was Outdoor Cat looking very annoyed.

I bundled her into the garage and went back to bed. The next morning, I dropped her off at the Humane Society knowing there was a possibility she might not be coming back, if she was deemed adoptable and they could find a good home for her (the outcome I was hoping for), or if she tested positive for a communicable disease like feline leukemia, in which case they would have to euthanize her. So I spent the day waiting for a phone call good or bad, but no phone call meant I could pick her up after 4:30 p.m.

So now she's resting in our garage, under observation for 48 hours before I can let her go. Our neighbor lent us his dog kennel so she didn't have to spend two days in the wildlife trap. I can offer her food tomorrow morning, and in theory I'm supposed to check her stitches, but I don't think that's going to be very easy. The black blob in the white plastic carrier is her, still looking peeved.

As part of the program, she had her ear notched, so observers can tell she's been spayed, and she now has a microchip identifying me as her owner should she ever get picked up as a stray, though after this adventure, she may never want to see me again!

Outdoor Cat Update

At the end of last year I wrote about the Mystery Cat that showed up on our front porch demanding food. We did finally hear via the realtor that the previous owners only left food out for it (for several years) but never did anything else. (I still don't know if it's male or female but so far no kittens have appeared!) We fed it all winter, and now that the snow has finally melted, and the temperature gone above freezing, it isn't waiting for a handout everyday, but I'll put food out on demand. (Like yesterday morning when it was peering in the front door, much to the annoyance of the indoor cats Nuts & Ruby.)

And apparently it has a posse since we came home the other night and saw three cats running together across our driveway and into our bushes, one of whom was Outdoor Cat and one of whom I have seen hanging around our yard on three different occasions. I'm hoping they're just visiting from the farm across the street!

One of my friends told me she had a snake under her deck, and as soon as she got it removed, a family of raccoons moved in, so I'm a little worried what we'd get if we did manage to relocate O.C.!

Moving House and the Mystery Cat

Sister, can you spare some kibble?

Since last I blogged, my husband and I ended up taking advantage of the slow real estate market and buying a house (my first). After what seems like months (well, weeks anyway) of packing, moving, cleaning, fixing, unpacking, reorganizing, etc, we're finally mostly settled in but still have boxes to be unpacked and art lying against the walls rather than hanging on it.

We had seen a black cat hanging around our back yard, but hadn't thought much of it until after the first big snow when it showed up at our front door looking for food. We asked our neighbor who it belonged to and he said as far as he knew it didn't have an owner. The previous owners of our house had been leaving food out for it the past few years, and it apparently lives under our deck.

It's extremely shy, though it has let me pet it while it's eating. This is the best photo I've managed to take of it because when it hears the camera whir open, it bolts. We've been waiting to hear whether the realtor was able to learn anything from the previous owners - did they ever take it to the vet? Have it neutered? Give it shelter in winter?

We can't let it inside, even if it wanted to come, because we already have two cats who can be very aggressive and territorial. (Nuts once chased our landlord's dog out of the yard at our old house, and Ruby freaks whenever she sees another cat out the window. They don't even get along with each other very well.) If it truly is a feral cat, it can't be adopted in the traditional way and suddenly be transformed into a house cat. And assuming it's been living here several years and knows this territory well, it might not do well being relocated (as much as I would like to take it to my sister's farm -- haven't convinced her to buy into that one yet ;o)

It survived our subzero temperatures before Christmas, but after doing a little research on-line I made a temporary feral cat shelter using stuff we had around the house: cardboard box, plastic sheeting, foam insulation board, and duct tape, plus some hay from my sister's farm. I'm not sure yet what the long term plan will be....