Foster Cat Update
Biscuits and Gravy were adopted on Saturday! I new they would get adopted fairly quickly once they were acclimated to people because they were very aesthetically beautiful cats.
They actually went to the Petco Kennels on Tuesday and I got three new fosters on Thursday, also difficult cats that don't trust humans.
Dale - I don't know his history but I believe he was trapped from a maintained feral colony, a feral colony that has someone feeding them to trap and TNR the adults and send the kittens to rescues. Someone at the rescue knows his history but the foster coordinator who passed him on to me wasn't positive, she's going to get back to me.
He has to be with other cats or he howls like crazy, so he is in my bedroom. Even with other cats, he has been howling at night. I have a suspicion he was bonded to another cat at the colony and got separated by the trapping. Tonight is the first night he hasn't howled but it's only 4:35 AM so maybe it's coming.
Fortunately my resident cat William has taken to him and the two of them are now pals, often playing together. He's the orange tabby pictured.
He will let me play with him but only at a distance, using one of those rods with a feathers on the end. He hisses at people who get too close for comfort but he does not bite or scratch even when picked up.
So far he only gets on my bed if I'm not on the bed, or if I'm asleep or he thinks I'm asleep. I do keep a cat bed on my bed and he likes it, but it's often occupied by another cat. He is letting me get closer to him without hissing at me but doesn't quite trust me yet.
The other two fosters I have are Ciabatta and Biscotti. Like Dale, they are orange Tiger Tabbies. I believe they are both girls, sisters, but I have to check my messages. At least one is because I held her long enough to check.
I can't visually tell them apart yet. They are microchipped (and spayed) so once I can distinguish them, I'll scan the chips. They are in the bathroom because they are hiders who refuse to come out except to use the litter box or eat and they refuse to do that with a person in the room. I think they are from a feral colony too, maybe the same as Dale but I'm not positive. Once they stop completely hiding all the time they too will come into my bedroom.
Unlike Dale, they do not hiss at me. On the third night, one of them bit me with a soft bite that I initially thought was a "please, sir, leave me alone" bite but it turns out it was an affection bite. Next day, it did it several times near the entrance of the cat house where I could see it was done in affection. The other licks in affection. Both love me putting my hands in to pet them and will even use their paws to try and stop me from taking my hand out, but they aren't coming out yet and they freak if held. But the fact that they love being pet while in their cat house makes it pretty clear they will quickly adapt.
I know they are coming out to play because the bathroom has a motion sensor light that I can see is on almost the entire night. I don't have pictures of them yet.
Here's Dale, two of him on the cat tree with William and one with him in the cat bed on my sleeping bed.
I'll post pictures of the other two once they start coming out of hiding with me in the bathroom which likely will be very soon.
The rescue is seeking people to take some kittens without a mother. It's been years since I've done that but as a teen I did it twice, but during this cat season, I've agreed to be the person (well, one of the persons) that deals with cats that don't yet trust people.
What I really want to be though is the person they send pregnant cats to (the rescue does not do spay aborts, but also does not do pregnant feral, so they only get pregnant cats if surrendered by an owner) but I gather almost all fosters want to do that...kittens are so damn cute.