I knew #10 would show up this summer. Each year for the last three years a new stray has shown up on our farm. Three years ago it was Weasel, an intact adult tom who was as tame and friendly as could be. Two years ago it was Bartholomew, an intact adult tom who was quite feral. Last year it was Somer, a perfectly beautiful, long-haired, spayed female calico – completely domesticated but with “entitlement issues” (in other words, she’s a princess).
On July 9, 2004, Joe drove down to the main road to try to get decent reception on his cell phone. On his way back, he encountered a newcomer lying in the middle of the driveway at the far end of the hayfields. When he got out of the car to try to capture her, she got up and walked toward him. He rewarded her friendliness with a ride up to the house.
When he brought her inside and I got a look at her, the first thing I did (after giving her food and water, of course) was grab my clippers. She had the most horrendous matting I’ve ever seen. She had apparently been doing her best to keep herself groomed, but the best she could manage was pushing all the shedding hair up into a mohawk along her back. From right behind her shoulder blades, down over one shoulder and all the way back to her tail, her fur had weaved itself into one huge, felted mat about 1-1 1/2″ thick and 4″ wide. She also had smaller mats in her tail and along the back of one hind leg. To my utter amazement, she put up very little struggle as Joe held her and I shaved her back bald (no easy feat since the mats were held tightly against her skin). I was amazed she didn’t have sores under that felted mat, but her skin was in good shape (ear mites notwithstanding).
Having effectively demitted the poor thing, I took a look at the rest of her, and she appeared to be in pretty good shape. She was thin but not starving, though you wouldn’t have known it by the way she gobbled up the food I gave her. She responded instantly to, “Here, kitty”, so I figured she had probably been a well-socialized barn cat.
I noticed her teats were more prominent than usual, but there was no milk, so I assumed she had recently weaned a litter. By the next morning, however, that assessment changed. After plenty of fresh food and water, she spent the night producing milk and had full teats in the morning. So now there were babies … somewhere … but where? I contemplated the possibilities:
- She was pregnant and about to give birth (which I doubted – I felt no sign of babies, and she was very thin).
- The dumper already disposed of the babies before dumping Momma on our road.
- The dumper dumped the babies with Momma on our road, but Joe didn’t see them. If that was true, they may now be dead after having been separated from Momma for nearly 24 hours.
What should I do now? I didn’t dare take Annabelle back to the end of the hayfields and let her loose to go looking for her babies who may or may not even have been there or still alive. I didn’t want to risk losing her, but I couldn’t stand the thought of kittens on their own out there. I felt awful thinking we may have inadvertently removed her from her kittens the day before, so I put a kitty harness on her, attached a long length of baling twine as a leash, and took her back to the spot where Joe had found her. I walked up and down both edges of the road with her so she could check out the brush and tall grass for her babies, but she had no interest in doing so. I watched her behavior and listened to the kittens. She vocalized a little, but it seemed directed at me rather than at a hidden litter. She did not want to be left out there on her own again, so she stuck with me step by step. At times she would walk over to the edge of the driveway and gaze into the tall grass, but she did not vocalize at those times, and her attention seemed only casually curious. She gave no indication of trying to find or call her kittens, and I neither heard nor saw any sign of babies in the vicinity. As full of milk as she was, I felt certain she would have called her kits to feed, had there been any there to call. I wandered around with her until I was convinced her kittens were nowhere to be found, then sadly brought her back up to the house. I figured whatever lowlife dumped her on our road probably also dispatched her kittens. I never will understand people who treat animals in such a manner. Fortunately, Annabelle didn’t seem at all distressed by the loss of her babies.
The same “neighbor” who dumped Weasel, Mew, and Somer on us probably got tired of Annabelle having kittens and decided she was the next to go. I’d be willing to bet money she came from the same place and may well be related to the other three (just as I’m certain they are related to each other). I don’t believe these “strays” are accidentally “finding” our farm. We are the only residence on a mile-and-a-third long township road that dead ends in our front yard after cutting through a section of national forest. Whoever keeps dumping these cats on us could just as easily be driving up to our property line without ever being seen by us. Any cats dumped at the edge of the farm would be a lot more likely to continue on the road up to the buildings than to turn around and walk a mile back through the woods to the main road. I doubt if any of these cats are actually “straying” all the way back in here to the farm.
On her second day here, Joe took Annabelle to the vet to be examined, dewormed, and vaccinated. Aside from ear mites, she checked out fine, including a negative leukemia test. We waited another ten days before having her spayed to give her milk time to dry up, at the vet’s recommendation. Annabelle was mighty uncomfortable for a few days until her teats started to relax. All I could do was withhold canned food and wait it out. She didn’t eat much, either because she was too uncomfortable to eat or because the vaccinations and dewormer left her feeling a little punky, or perhaps something innate was telling her to eat lightly until her milk dried up. She growled at me when I even touched her belly, poor little girl.
I typically wait till a newcomer’s been here long enough to relax and feel healthy and strong before asking their name. I sit quietly in a room with the animal and ask what his/her name is. Every time I sat with our newest addition, the name Annie kept jumping into my head. Unfortunately, Joe HATES the name Annie, so I asked her if she’d be willing to compromise a little. She’s such an elegant-looking cat that Annie really did seem too pedestrian for her. Annabelle of Shadowood (our farm name) seemed to fit.
Annabelle was very stressed by the other animals for a while, but we kept her in the bedroom with baby gates filling the doorway between the bedroom and living room to give everybody a chance to see our newest family member and her a chance to observe “family life” from a safe distance for a few weeks. I awoke several times those first couple nights to Annabelle and one or more of the residents exchanging hisses from their respective sides of the gates – nothing major, just a little reciprocal disapproval and tension. But Annabelle decided to ultimately retreat rather than interact. Within a few days, she was refusing to approach the gates at all. She was going to prove rather challenging to integrate into the rest of the family. She was a VERY scrappy girl who had absolutely NO interest in making the acquaintance of any of the resident animals. Annabelle would, however, tolerate Raggie, who spent his nights in the bedroom. Raggie’s not that much bigger than she is, and he’s so old and deaf and half-blind and doddery that even Annabelle knew he was no threat.
“Scrappy” doesn’t begin to describe Annabelle’s initial reactions to our Aussie mix, Tasha. Their first encounter occurred a couple days after Annabelle arrived here, before she was spayed and while she was all bagged up with milk. Tasha was outside with me while I was cleaning the arena attached to my barn. I was in the arena for 30-45 minutes, and when I came back into the barn, there was Annabelle lying in the barn aisle with Tasha standing over her. Annabelle had torn the screen out of the bedroom window and escaped to come find me. She could just as easily have wandered off in search of her missing kittens or a new boyfriend, but she came out to the barn instead.
Tasha did her “herd the cat” routine and kept Annabelle in place until I scooped her up and carried her back into the house. Because Annabelle didn’t seem terribly upset by Tasha in the barn, I figured it’d be safe to have a more “civilized” meeting in the house later that day. BIG miscalculation on my part! Annabelle clearly intended to get even for the indignities forced upon her in the barn by Tasha … and she did so in spades! When I brought Tasha through the utility room, through the master bathroom, and into the bedroom, Annabelle first chased her up onto the bed and later flung herself on poor Tasha’s back repeatedly in a violent attack. Tasha was scared to death, and every time I managed to pull Annabelle off her, the raging cat-beast immediately flung herself back onto my poor terrified Tasha! As I continued to pull the maniacal feline off my petrified puppy girl and get Tasha out the utility room door, Somer rushed in and threw herself on top of Annabelle. I don’t know if she was protecting me or Tasha, but there was NO WAY she was going to allow that new cat to harm HER family! I was afraid Somer and Annabelle would be mortal enemies as a result of that incident, but that, happily, did not turn out to be the case.
When the time eventually came for Annabelle to leave the bedroom and start face to face introductions, she did NOT want to come out into the rest of the house. I eventually put the harness and leash on her and forced the issue for a few minutes a day until she realized no one here intended her harm. She was VERY stressed during her first living room outing – lots of hissing and growling on her part – but I made her lie close to me on the couch for a few minutes while three of the dogs and two of the cats laid nearby. As anxious as Annabelle was, that brief living room visit proved uneventful and started to lay the groundwork for peaceful living. On the second day, Annabelle spent quite a while slinking around, hissing at every living thing AND her leash every time she felt it tug at her harness! She finally settled down enough to even play a bit. She lay down very close to the old Moondog’s face as she napped on her dog bed. Annabelle hadn’t met Moonie yet and didn’t realize Moonie LOVES all cats and would never lift a paw to hurt one if her life depended on it. Moonie was sleeping peacefully when Annabelle decided to test the waters by giving her a light bat on the nose. It woke Moonie up, but there must not have been any claws involved because she immediately went back to sleep. Annabelle seemed adequately satisfied. I gave Annabelle a little more living room time each day until she realized no one here was out to hurt her. Actually, I was just trying to make sure this little spitfire didn’t hurt anyone else! It took a while, but the more the other animals ignored her, the more she relaxed. It wasn’t long before I freed her from the leash and harness and allowed her to integrate on her own.
But poor Tasha! Tasha remained outside the first time Annabelle ventured into the living room. On the second day, Tasha was in. As soon as she saw that demon kitty, she beat a hasty retreat into another room. When Tasha finally emerged to see if the coast was clear and caught sight of Annabelle, she hid behind me and shook so hard I thought she’d come right out of her skin! Even after Annabelle had been back in the bedroom for a couple hours, Tasha would still be hyperventilating in one of the living room chairs. It took a couple months before Tasha could even look at Annabelle without trembling and running for cover. Something tells me Annabelle is one cat Tasha will NOT be chasing.
For all her tough bravado, Annabelle is actually quite affectionate in a thoroughly feline manner. She hates to be picked up and held, and will quickly squirm out of my arms when I try to do so, but she also refuses to be ignored. She is incredibly playful and very squirrely. It was no easy feat holding her still long enough to get the harness on her. Boy, can that girl wiggle! Sometimes she goes skidding across the kitchen floor and does her superball impression bouncing off the walls just for the joy of it.
In the beginning, she was quite wary of the other animals, though she couldn’t contain her curiosity at times. She would occasionally get close enough to sniff one of their tails, at which point she’d leap back and hiss like the thing bit her nose. Too funny! She’s much more comfortable with her new family members now, though, and has even chosen Mew as her play buddy. Every now and then, she’ll chase him playfully across the floor, and he’ll oblige like the big mean tomcat with a heart of gold that he is. The Lion King, Noddy, even tried to flirt with Annabelle at one point, but he’s a bit much for her. I suppose she finds his size rather intimidating. He does outweigh her about 3:1, after all.
Annabelle is, indeed, a very beautiful girl. She’ll be even more beautiful once her coat grows back in. Those blue eyes of hers are absorbing. Annabelle looks most like a blue point Ragdoll. She doesn’t have either the smooshed face or the excessively poofy coat of a Himalayan (thank goodness!). The vet thinks she is no older than two years, but I suspect she’s even younger than that.
That’s our newest little girl in a nutshell. It took a while, but Annabelle is now a happy, healthy, well fed (a little too well fed), and well adjusted member of Shadowood’s Pride of Joy.
