Grendal
Submitted by Dawn Sky
Last June my house mates and I noticed that a black, homeless cat had been sleeping in our yard. She would sit at the far end of the yard and watch the occupants of our household.
On occasion, when we would forget she was outside watching, she would come up to the glass and observe us up close. When one of us would look at her she would run away and hide in the flowers that covered our fence. She seemed a bit perplexed at to what, I could only imagine, was our life form. We were foreign to her.
She started to play outdoors with my housemates cat, who is named CAT. If we would enter the yard and look at her, our feral would run away. Soon, we all decided not to look at her. We were always aware of her presence. We weren’t certain if she had a home or not, since:
A- She always slept in our yard.
B- She wasn’t starving.
I put a bowl of food and water out in the yard. For a week, but the bowls would remain at the fill line. I was perplexed. My neighbors had an aviary and recently aquired a dog. That combination didn’t seem cat friendly. I walked around my block asking my neighbors if they were missing a cat and they all replied with a no.
I decided to dedicate one day to watching the bowls of food and water. That day out of the corner of my eye, while watching t.v. I saw that our feral cat had come into our house and was eating out of our housecats bowls. Our cat didn’t seem to mind. I was so surprised! She stole my heart by making it in the world all alone.
She made friends with our housecat, over came her fear of us two legged dwellers, enough to be able to enter our domain. She was bold and curious and had a strong survival instinct. She went on thinking that no one was watching her each time she entered our home to get a bite to eat and fresh water to drink. In this way, she started to make our home her own.
Soon after she would visit and leave us with her catch of the day and to hang out in our house to escape the elements. Other times she would present her catch to our housecat and my housemate would come along to find that her cat had a catch and then she would proudly say, “Look what CAT caught. She is brave and I am prould.” I never told her that our feral caught it. CAT didn’t know what to do with her catch. She would just walk around with it in her mouth and then put it on the ground and stare at it.
During the month of October, our feral started hanging out in our house more because of the cold. That was O.K. with us, but I needed to catch her to have her spayed and vaccinated. When I finally caught her, I noticed a piece of her ear missing. I then went to my computer and googled the words “nicked ear”. Fix Our Ferals was one of the first 10 hits, that google came up with. I bought her to the next Fix Our Ferals clinic and the volunteers told me that she was already spayed. I took our feral in as my own and my housemate named her, Grendal. I was so happy to be able to take in our feral, that I started to volunteer with the Oakland Winter Cat Campaign. Grendal is getting friendlier every day. It takes time, but I know she is happy and I am happy with her.
Back to Amazing Ferals