John BullRealised I've never shared Napoleon the feral kitty's story here, so here we go.
This is Napoleon, and this is the story of his nine-month journey from a hungry, desperate feral street cat to snuggly duvet monster. /1 🧵 #cats
This is Not My Cat (Max). He lives next door and has always regularly popped in (with his owner's permission) when his they are out and/or their house is on fire.
Literally. I opened the door to him one day and as he strolled past, I heard alarms/saw smoke and rang the fire brigade. Still half convinced Max was trying to kill their dog /2
In late July 2021 we noticed he was a bit annoyed. It soon became clear why.
Another, much smaller cat was following him around, in obvious awe. We christened her Also Not My Cat.
This was amusing. What WASN'T amusing was when we realised how ragged and hungry she looked.
Here she is trying to talk to him through their window. He's having none of it. /3
Neither my wife nor I are cat thieves. But there are two MILLION stray and feral cats in the UK, most unneutered and most in London. Walthamstow (where we live) is a hotspot for this.
Her behaviour and desperate state worried us. We spoke to
Cats Protection. They talked us through obvious signs/checks we could do to see if she was feral. If so, they'd try to help us at least get her neutered. /4
The problem: she was UTTERLY TERRIFIED of people. Whilst this suggested she was a full feral, and had probably been born wild, it also meant she ran at any approach.
But eventually, as she got even thinner and saw us giving the odd snack to Not My Cat, she clearly reached a point where she decided she needed to be brave and trust someone.
She came closer.
She asked for food. /5
I really, really can't overstate how suspicious Also Not My Cat was of people.
Again, we're not in the habit of feeding random cats (and you shouldn't be either) but she was so thin, and hungry that we put a plate down for her with a bit of tuna on it.
She came back.
By then we had some young-cat-friendly biscuit. /6
Over the next few months, we managed to persuade her to properly cross the threshold into the house (just about) to get food. This also meant we could chip scan her (Cats Protection lent us a scanner) and get posters up in the area. The lack of response confirmed she wasn't owned. /7
Eventually, the lure of dreamies was even enough to tempt her to approach and eat from our hands.
The first time Also Not My Cat had dreamies she began purring...
...and immediately jumped about 2ft in the air and ran away.
She scared herself by purring. I think it was the first time she'd ever done it.
I don't mind saying that made me cry /8
A Tattered Scrapbook@garius I love this! You’re a good man, JB!