These days a little stray named Mooch Two has become our fourth cat. Unlike his predecessor Mooch One, Mooch Two truly is homeless, although he's beginning to treat our veranda like home!

We first noticed him in the summer hungrily eating the bread we’d left in the back yard for the squirrels. We realized he was starving, so we put out a dish of our cats’ food and a bowl of water for him. Mooch Two attacked it frantically.

That sealed our future – and his. From then we fed him. When the chilly early winds of autumn began to blow, Mooch Two moved to our big protected stone-and-brick veranda. And later when our cold Canadian winter loomed, we lined a big armchair with blankets and a heating pad, which on cold days we turn on for him.

We also provide him three or four meals a day, and water. It's a delight to come down in the morning, look out the window facing onto the veranda, and see him sitting up in his pre-warmed bed, staring in the window, waiting for breakfast.

Since he arrived he's no longer the scrawny waif he was when he first came to us. These days he’s a plump, healthy-looking Gentleman Puss (assuming he’s male). We’d like to think this transformation is because of what we’re doing for him - as much as he'll allow. He's losing some of his wariness of us, but I doubt if he'll ever let us touch him, or take him inside. All his actions tell us he’s a feral cat.

We wonder what kind of former life our little part-time cat has had, but we're trying to make his present life the best it can be.

Copyright © Bobcat
January 14, 2006