No, this isn't quite a tale from Dr. Seuss. Far from it, in fact.
Before living where I am now, I was living out in the country on part of my dad's farm. See, the farm became my dad's when my grandfather died in 1995. After completing UMO in 2002 I was needing a place to live due to personal circumstances, and my dad offered up part of the farm where he had a small house that he was not using.
When I say out in the country, I mean out in the country. The rate of traffic is about 1 car/truck about every 2 hours. Sometimes maybe 2 cars in the same hour! Potato fields all around, farm houses, barns, ... the whole works. So where I was living there right in back of the house was a small patch of woods with a small stream flowing through it. Right nearby was a 'potato house', or some long structure for a different farmer that they used to house.... duh, their potatoes!
Unfortunately it was the type of setting that the low-life people in the world would look for when they are wanting to drop their animal off out in the country because they no longer want it. Excuse me, let me rephrase that. They abandon the animal. That seriously pisses me off - you do not abandon an animal. If you don't have the capability to take care of it, find it a suitable and loving new home, or you take it to the animal shelter.
Well, since I was on the farm, my dad still used the land partly to farm and the yard area right by the house I was staying in for some of his farm work. So when I talk about living on the farm, I was getting about as hill-billy as it can get. Tractor parked there. At times he had his combine machine. And assorted piles of timber and lumber, tools and other things sitting around. It was...the farm. So one day my dad mentions that he saw a cat out around the yardway that he knew was not one of my five. Was it a neighbor's cat? Nope. It was a stray. So for several days I kept an eye out for this kitty, only seeing him randomly at odd times of day. Each time I saw him around the yard, I would attempt to approach him in hopes of being able to take him into the shelter where he would have a safer place to live. (The time of all this was later in the fall, so we're talking about September or so and thus it was getting closer to the change in weather.)
Luckily because of my regular volunteer work with the animal shelter, I borrowed a safe-trap in hopes of capturing the kitty. After several days of intense waiting and watching, I finally got him tricked into the cage with a small dish of dry food. Unfortunately it was later at night, and I wouldn't be able to take him in until the next day. So what was I to do? At the time I had an old rabbit hutch pen sitting outside for my rabbits that I had at that time. Some how I was able to safely allow him out of the trap and into the hutch. I just let him cool off his jets in there overnight as he was very irritated at this point. The next morning I was encountering the problem I had not quite thought of: how to get him out. I could open up the back door on the rabbit pen, but he would almost certainly run away. So, using my suave clothing get-up that I use when I give my own cats a bath (long pants, several layers of shirts) I carefully opened up the door, managed to get the kitty on the scruff of the neck and yelled to my dad to open up a cat carrier of mine so I could put him in. Then we were off to the animal shelter.
At the shelter he was much more calm, finally being out of the carrier and rabbit pen. Over the next few weeks he actually became quite a friendly cat around me, and I was hoping that he would get adopted out. Unfortunately there came a time when several cats were having to be put down for health reasons and behavior reasons. He was among those selected. I don't know what it was in me, but I managed to convince the manager to allow the cat to have one more chance and for him not to go down. She agreed and the kitty was spared.
Want a happy ending? Here it is. That same kitty was adopted out no more than a week or two later.
A day or two later after first taking him in, my dad mentioned again that he saw a cat around that was orange in color. I looked surprised and tried to tell him that I took the cat we managed to capture into the shelter. Another time or two my dad mentioned this to me again. I was almost getting frustrated to the point of not understanding this at all. I took the cat into the shelter....how is my dad seeing a cat that looks the same around in the yard? Furthermore, I was not seeing this "second" phantom cat at all!
The answer to it all was that it was not the same cat - it was a different cat. I was able to confirm this when a week or two later I finally observed him. I saw the phantom cat! My dad wasn't crazy after all! (haha). Basically the same routine went on as with the first cat. Except this time I just took him in the cage into the shelter, instead of trying to transport him to a cat carrier or something.
I thought it was very strange and very unusual to find basically two idential orange looking cats that were probably about the same age in the same time frame of only a week or so. I thought for sure that they may have been a pair that were dropped off in the countryside, and they managed to stay together. Hopefully that was the end of it all, right? Nope....
Almost exactly a year later my dad and I noticed .... a grey cat that was hanging around. This time though it was closer to winter and was beginning to get quite cold and chilly out. I managed to catch him similarly to the first orange cat, later in the evening. Unfortunately I had no place to put him outside cuz it was cold, and I certainly couldn't bring him inside. BRINGING IN A STRAY CAT IN A CAGE INTO MY HOUSE WHERE MY FIVE CATS WERE?? I'd be surely asking for hell to open right up and swallow me up. So the best option I could do was put the cage on the porch, but managed to cover it up with as many blankets as I could afford. Next morning, took him and the cage into the shelter.
Now, is THAT the end of the story? Noooooo......
It wasn't very long at all until I began to notice ANOTHER stray cat hanging around. Going at this rate, take a guess what color this one was? If you guessed grey again, that's right. The previous year there were 2 orange cats, and now this year there were 2 grey cats.
However, when I brought this 2nd grey cat into the animal shelter in one of my cats' carriers, I got to the shelter and was about to open up my passenger side car door to take the carrier out when.....the carrier door flew open and out jumped the cat. Holy ****. How in the world was I going to get the kitty out now? The shelter manager came out and she actually got in the car in hopes of caputring the kitty. Unfortunately when she went to open the door on the other side after first being unsuccessful, the grey cat decided to make a break for it. Darted out of my car, around the car, right over to the shelter building and around it to the back and then out of sight.
Despite searching for some time that morning, I was never able to locate the cat. Not sure he was ever picked up, so he has been living out in the woods or area out behind the shelter facility since then.
That fall of the grey cats was the fall of 2006. By the fall of 2007, I was then living in my current apartment in downtown Presque Isle. I've asked my dad if he's seen any more stray cats hanging around the farm again, particularly in pairs of two. But the last I asked him he hadn't seen any. So in a way that's a good thing, because it'd mean that there probably weren't any stray cats hanging around. Otherwise isn't a horrible thing, but its comforting to know that there'd be that many fewer strays around that didn't have a home.
It is a sad situation to find a stray cat that someone has abandoned out in the country like that. As odd as it all was, and as coincidential as it all was, it was just so truly unique and incredibly strange that there were 2 orange cats one fall and then 2 grey cats the next fall. It really did appear as though each set was perhaps the same age and probably were each brother-brother pairs. Someone can't tell me that it was all just a coincidence that they showed up like that. Someone had to have dropped them off. However, I also believe that they were attracted to the farm because... I dunno, maybe animals like that can tell where there are other animals around. And on a hardly used country road like that with sparse houses located around and potato fields occuping the lands, my cats surely made a presence known.
Even if I only was able to save one cat's life and helped him find a loving home to get into and not have to spend it out in the wild where he might not have made it, I'd like to think that I did accomplish something.
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