Flipping On Cats

CATS ARE ADORABLE, beautiful, intelligent creatures, as anybody on Facebook should know by now, considering the abundance of kitten videos endlessly shared. The number of domestic home based cats is approximately equal to the number of stray cats across America, estimates indicate. maybe forty million apiece. I go for the strays. Six years ago a small pretty female showed up in my yard, every day for several days in the fall, staring at me relentlessly, young, angry, frightened. I telepathed to her that I was willing if she was. Although I had just built and moved into a nice new house, and was determined to have no animals shedding on my perfectly lovely carpet, this little cat flipped me, over a period of about a week. Every day she inched closer to my porch as I got home from work and walked past her, pretending not to notice her. One fateful day I fed her, and then, tired of her still being leery of me, I, with great temerity, the hell with it, went into the house, made a heaping big tuna sandwich, and sat down on the front porch. Try that! Try avoiding my lap now, you little hard to get girl! No free lunches; tuna has a price. Within seconds she was in my lap, and within days, my house. She has been with me six years now. Soon after her entry, another feral stray, a yellow tabby, noticed Mandi coming and going like she owned the place, and he decided he wanted to join her. Why is she so special! What am I, chopped livah? He started standing at my front door, day after day, screaming at me. Now it was my turn to play hard to get. One stray kitten is quite enough, thank you. He tried to dig a hole in the window screen of my bedroom, and succeeded, sticking a wire in his foot, which caused him to limp. That broke my hard heart. He ended up inside too. Two five inch kittens, scampering about atop me as I slept nightly. Then came the third, a siammese blue point male cutie, who sat in my driveway one frigid night, howling pitifully. In he came, where he remains six years later. My three babies. All spayed and neutered, three feral cats turned snuggle companions. And now, new developments recently. Seven stray cats, two mothers and five kittens, living in my garage, at my leisure. Two precious pure white momma kittens, feral as hell, with their broods. They still won't let me touch them, but I'm closing in. That's a lot of cat food, and ground beef left over at the senior center. The five kittens are beautiful and adorable, all different coolers, all vaccinated and "fixed", having been trapped by me and taken to the vet, frightened but healthier, just like their beautiful mothers. That hassle is finally complete. God, the money. Now, the only question is, how long until they come in also, and start the process of integrating into the family? That's one small step for cat, one giant leap for many new litter boxes. I keep the place clean. The moral of this story is; take in, adopt the nearest stray cat. Its a lot of love and fulfillment for a relatively low price.