When You Love a Wild One

I met beautiful Neville, a feral cat, late last summer. Of course, when I met him, he had no name and I promised myself I would not name him. Eventually I told myself he needed a name so I could more easily speak about him to my man Dan and to Cathy, our cat whisperer. If I named him, a connection would occur, and I did not want to be connected to Neville. He was temporary in our lives.  He would be moving on. That’s what ferals do, right?

Early morning Neville would emerge from the thick bamboo swath that lines our backyard. He wanted breakfast. After eating, he disappeared into the bamboo until 4 o’clock or 4:30, tea time for Brits. Many who have seen Neville’s photo say he’s a furry version of Neville Chamberlain, the British diplomat who tried unsuccessfully to negotiate peace with Hitler. The cat Neville is Saville Row gray with a white moustache, gray goatee, piercing yellow eyes and, sadly, a permanently displeased expression on his face.

On an especially warm day in early fall, Zelda, our own beloved cat, and I observed Neville asleep in a shaft of sunlight in our side yard, which we keep wild and overgrown. This is the only time I saw him appear content and unguarded. Did he sense winter was coming? How many winters had he survived thus far? We didn’t know.

Neville was still here when the weather turned cool. Dan and I worried about his survival. Cathy kindly loaned us a cat igloo. Dan and I moved this igloo several times wondering where Neville would feel safest. Cathy told us not to put blankets or towels inside to keep him warm. While thick fabric may make ferals feel warm, they can freeze to death more easily. We went to the garden center and bought a bale of hay. Dan hurt his back lugging it up our stone steps to the backyard. I filled the igloo with straw, but we had no idea if Neville ever used it or even where he went when he finished his meals. He is a cat of mystery.

As it got cold and rainy, I realized I could not keep going all the way out to the bamboo on the edge of the backyard to feed him. Gradually I persuaded Neville to eat on our deck. Another neighbor gave us a little heated house, which we put on the deck as well. Mornings Neville would go inside the little house and wait to be fed.

We tried to move the house to the side porch, which would have given Neville more protection from the weather, but he would not tolerate change and refused to be moved from the back deck. Dan was afraid the little house was not heating well enough for the snow and freezing temperatures we were expecting.  I ordered a new house from Amazon that we put together while it was snowing hard outside. This house felt tighter and warmer. Although the new house looked much like the old, Neville refused to go inside it even though the temperatures fell below freezing. The only difference in the new house and the old one was a heavy plastic flap in the front to keep out the wind. The plastic flap was attached with Velcro. I pulled off the flap before nightfall, and Neville at last went inside.

In the morning as more snow fell, Neville ate his breakfast, got back in his little house, and curled up. I was sitting nearby at our table with Dan as we had our breakfast. Zelda was on her shelf in my office in front of the heating vent, a favorite spot. All felt right with the world.  

In early spring, Neville was always on our deck begging for food. He could eat 3-4 cans of cat food a day, along with cat soup, scraps, and high protein kibble. Finally, I admitted to Dan and Cathy what I had secretly known for a while: Nev was pregnant, which meant she was female. I read up on pregnant cats.

Because it was still cold outside, I got a box from Costco and fixed up a birthing room for her in the house. Nev was super anxious one day when I was feeding her. I sensed today was the day. I tried to pick her up with a towel, but she got away. Dan warned me that if she bit me, I would have to get rabies shots, since she’d never been vaccinated. I stopped trying. She ran away, and we did not see her for several days. One morning, she appeared, skinny and hungry. She ate fast, gulping food, then ran away. This became her pattern.

Eventually we tried to follow her to see where she was keeping her kittens. She leapt over fences and ran through the yards of houses behind us. Dan tried to follow her movements in the car with no luck. Later we went on foot to these houses and asked about her, showing people her photo. One neighbor had seen her before on his ring camera, but had no clue where she was. Cathy came over and searched yards that faced the access road. I put Neville’s photo on the neighborhood site Next Door as did Cathy, asking if anyone who saw her would please contact us. We got responses from the usual ND crazies, meanies, and nice folks as well. Finally, we gave up on ever finding her kittens. I figured they must have been born dead.

Dan and I decided we needed to trap Neville and get her spayed. Female ferals do not live long if they are constantly pregnant. We did not want to go through all this heartache again. By this time, I realized Nev must have had several litters of kittens in her lifetime. I went through a TNR class through the county to learn how to trap her. TNR stands for: trap-neuter-release. I am so lucky to live here in Farifax County because they administer this process and helped me every step of the way.

One Saturday we fed Nev nothing. The TNR folks said this was necessary in order to trap her, but I found it so painful. I hate to see an animal hungry. Nev climbed our glass doors begging for food. Sunday morning, we put sardines and rotisserie chicken in a trap. She was so hungry she went in, and we had her. She was not happy about all this.

At 6AM Monday morning we were outside the Lorton Animal Shelter with Nev in her trap. Lorton is on the edge of large Fairfax County. We live inside the Beltway, close to the DC line, so traveling out there was not easy. I paid for all the services available to Nev in addition to services the country provides: her being spayed and getting a rabies shot. We had to drive back to Lorton to pick Nev up. The vet tech told us that when they dewormed her, they found that she had a stomach full of worms. She also said that Nev was the loudest, most violent cat they had ever worked with! I was taken aback by this. I felt like a mother being told her child was terrible.

When we finally released Nev from the trap early evening, she ran away. The next morning, she appeared for breakfast, then disappeared again. Dan and I told each other that we might never see her again. That she would never forgive us for what we did to her.

But she came back late afternoon, looking exhausted. With her, she brought her four darling kittens with big blue eyes. I am convinced her babies were the reason she acted as she had at the shelter. She knew she needed to get back to them. At last, I got to use my kitten food. We fed them and talked about what to do with them. They were as wild as Neville and not use to human touch. My concern was that the shelter might not take these wild babies if they got much older. Dan and I wanted a better life for these darlings than living wild with Nev.

I talked to the intake lady at the county shelter and was told that YES they would take the kittens and put them up for adoption. Unfortunately, we would have to go all the way to Lorton again, because the other shelter at Fair Oaks was too crowded.

Dan managed to capture the fraidy kitten of the bunch first. Fraidy screamed for her mama, and Nev tried to attack Dan. We put the kitten in Zelda’s plush carrier and set it in the half bath atop newspapers and thick towels. I felt sorry for Fraidy because he was used to being in a gang of 4. He cried for his sibs. Before nightfall, Dan managed to get the other three. They all clumped together in the carrier when we were near them, but when we shut the door, they scampered out to eat and turn things over. They were a rowdy little crew. The largest one was the leader, a white and gray puff ball. She slept on top of the other three with her front and back paws spread out as if to protect them.

The next day when we brought them to Lorton, the intake lady and the vet tech appeared charmed by them. They told us that they would socialize them, meaning get them used to human touch, introduce them to a litter box, and spay and vaccinate them before they put them up for adoption. The vet tech told us the kittens would probably be adopted the first day they were available. Most people want kittens, not full-grown cats. We let them keep Zelda’s carrier, probably the nicest place they had ever slept, since they were born in the dirt somewhere. When the vet tech took them away, I cried.

Since then, Neville has become our deck cat. She is always out there and has come to enjoy sleeping curled on the thick cushioned outdoor furniture. It’s one day at a time with her, though. She is still wild and will always be. I do not let myself think about winter or what will happen when Nev gets sick. Veterinarians will not treat ferals. We still cannot pick her up. Sometimes she lets me stroke her back, that’s it. I noticed that her abdomen looked sore from her surgery and told Cathy about it. Cathy texted me the other day and asked if she was healed and if she had forgiven us. After all we had trapped her, gotten her spayed, and took her kittens away.

I texted back: Healed and forgiven. May it be so.