The Cat Distribution System Strikes Again: Part 1
A post about our new cat with lots of pics!
CW: discussion of cat death and cat health problems
(This post has a happy ending though!)
Sometime in July 2024, I noticed a small, orange, collarless cat in our backyard. He was hiding underneath my spouse’s car. I went outside with a churu and was able to feed him. He was very skittish and wouldn’t come out from underneath the vehicle. He was ravenous and kept trying to bite the churu wrapper to try to take the entire thing with him to safety further underneath the car. Because of how scrawny he looked, I tried to catch him that very day, but he ended up running down the alley. Our neighbors had been outside during this process, and they too tried aiding in the capture of this unknown cat.
Over the next month, neighbors on both sides of our house (all cat people) were alerted to this cat’s presence. All three of our households started ensuring there was cat food out for this little guy. One of our neighbors always has cat food on their front porch, and the other ones started putting food near my spouse’s car (like we were doing as well) since that is where the cat was seen most frequently.
I was extremely happy that I hadn’t scared off the cat completely the first time, and over the weeks he seemed to equate our yard as a safe space where he could eat. He would never let us get close enough to him to grab him, and if we tried to make a move he would run into (and through) our garage or down the alley. But it was encouraging that he kept coming back!
My neighbors put up a post on Ring to see if anyone knew this cat, but no one did. There is another (larger) orange cat that is my other neighbors’ and is an inside/outside cat. His name is Stuffy Cat, and when we would see Stuffy Cat and the smaller orange cat outside at the same time, Stuffy Cat was aggressive while the little guy would just run away to avoid conflict. It was frustrating to have Stuffy Cat behaving territorially in our yard, but he has done that for years.
While all these stray cat sightings were happening, our current cat Percy was having health problems. He ended up visiting two emergency vet clinics due to vomiting blood clots and had an overnight stay for an ultrasound. Ultimately, they are thinking that his symptoms are due to a flare up of his irritable bowel disease and chronic kidney disease because we had been allowing him to stray from his restrictive diet in order to give him some variety and to help him take his meds.
But the day we were going to pick him up from the overnight stay at the second emergency clinic, as we were getting ready to leave, one of my neighbors came to our door trying to get the contact information for Stuffy Cat’s owners because Stuffy Cat had been hit by a car and was dead in front of our house. It was a very distressing event, but his owners came out to claim him. I got some slight closure from seeing Stuffy Cat gently lifted up and placed in a cardboard tote with a blanket. He has been a constant presence in the neighborhood for many years, and even though he was a total pain in the ass, he was our pain in the ass.
Over the next few days, our cat Percy was recovering from his traumatic medical event inside and the little orange cat was a more frequent visitor outside. I believe he increasingly felt more comfortable hanging out in our yard because Stuffy Cat was no longer around to chase him away from the area. On one of those Excessive Heat Warning days (that we have been getting more frequently in our locale), my spouse went outside to try to see if he could catch him.
My spouse actually spent hours out there next to his vehicle giving the little guy food and trying to get him to come out from underneath the vehicle. I would have joined him, but I was in the midst of doing a photo shoot I had already postponed multiple times. I did, at one point, walk outside in my costume to deliver some tuna in the hopes that would help the situation. My spouse did get close enough to the cat to pet him a little, and the cat hung out underneath the car for a longer period of time taking a nap too. We both took it as a promising sign that the little guy was hanging out longer, and we were both a little bummed when he ended up heading down the alley when he had enough.
After the cat left that day, a severe thunderstorm rolled into our area. It was a powerful storm that turned the sky ominous colors. (This photo gallery shows a lot of beautiful images of the event with skies varying in shades from blue to yellow to orange to pink to red to purple with double rainbows + lightning!) Throughout the entire storm, I was worrying about the cat and hoping it had a safe place to hunker down.
A few hours later when the rain had stopped and my spouse was getting ready for bed, he looked out the window and exclaimed that the little orange cat was back. The cat was closer to our house on our deck steps. I decided I was going to go outside with a treat for him. Before my spouse even commented, I was putting on some shoes, grabbing a churu, and heading out the back door.
I stopped a few feet away from the cat because I didn’t want to get too close and scare him away. He was on the steps to our deck, and I was on the deck. I opened up the tuna with scallop flavored churu and called him over while waving it in his direction. The little guy surprisingly came over immediately and even walked through pooled water on the deck to approach me.
As he was eating the treat that I had in my left hand, I slowly pulled it to the left, so his body was more directly in front of me. I gently started petting his head, neck, and back. When he didn’t flinch, pull away, or run, I took it as my moment and wrapped my right arm around his little body and snatched him up. He was still trying to lick the treat as I started hollering to my spouse through the screen door, “I got him! Open up!”
The little orange cat was not fighting to be put down, and he didn’t seem displeased until he saw our cat, Percy. At that point, I started to get nervous about my bare arms and their proximity to this new cat’s claws. As I was trying to put him on the basement stairs and close the basement door, he bolted into our bedroom and proceeded to hide underneath our bed.
It was too complicated to try to get him out then as we would’ve had to move furniture around, and my spouse was trying to get to sleep. We decided to let this cat stay in our bedroom for the night and just shut the doors to keep our cat Percy out of that space. I’m usually up until the wee hours of the morning, so I thought I would be able to keep an eye on things until my spouse woke up for work.
Because of the adrenaline dump when I captured him, my body was shaking with excitement for awhile after the event. Of course, that night/early morning I started to get sleepier earlier than usual because the adrenaline had left my system. As I was nodding off sitting up in bed (around 4 am), the bedroom door opened (from a combination of the new cat pulling and Percy pushing), and both my spouse & I flew out of bed as there was a cat skirmish and chase throughout the house. Thankfully, the door between the bathroom and bedroom had been closed, so when the new cat ran into that room he ran straight into a closed door. He hid underneath the vanity, but my spouse was able to pull him out with no damage to either of them. We finally got the little orange cat into our basement.
Our current cat Percy was originally a street cat who came up onto my porch around 14 years ago and never left again. Percy only had ear mites when he came off the street which I found slightly surprising as he and his siblings had been living in the sewer nearby in our neighborhood. From that previous experience, I knew to keep the cats separated, just in case the one that had been outside had something that could negatively impact Percy.
We called our vet right away the next day to get the little orange cat in to find out whether or not he had a microchip. In the meantime, I put up a post on NextDoor about him and scoured all 400 cats in our area on Pawboost. I found a cat on that site that I thought for sure was this cat, but the owner replied saying their cat had already been found. We had to wait 10 days to get into our vet for an appointment, and during that time period we kept the cats apart completely.
My spouse and I took turns hanging out in the basement with the little guy so one of us was always upstairs with Percy and he wouldn’t get jealous that we were abandoning him for another cat. We left “Relaxing Cat Music” playlists on the TV when we weren’t down there. Because we weren’t sure if the cat from outside had any bugs (and we were pretty itchy the first few days), we did a complete clothing change with shower every time we came upstairs.
At the vet visit, it was determined there was no microchip which is what we expected since he also hadn’t been neutered. The vet said that he didn’t have any mites/fleas, looked pretty healthy, was around 1 year old, and weighed around 10lbs. He had definitely put on weight in the 10 days we had him in the basement as we were feeding him at regular intervals, but he was still eating like he might never see food again for the first week. He basically rotated between eating, sleeping, pooping, and vocalizing loudly, just like a baby.
While he did spend some time hiding behind the toilet in the basement bathroom the first day, once we got him out of the bathroom, he started to acclimate faster than I anticipated. The very first day we played with a ball pushing it back and forth to each other, and he was purring, taking pets, and letting us touch him. The second day I placed him in my lap, and he stayed so long he fell asleep on me. He was also snuggling with my spouse too.
On the third day, he rolled over completely for full belly rubs. I have never met a cat that was so sweet and trusting so quickly, especially one that was previously living outdoors. My neighbor surmised that his pleasant disposition probably meant that he hadn’t been mistreated by people. I worried that we had kidnapped someone’s cat, but between my online post on NextDoor, my neighbor’s post on Ring, talking to my neighbors, searching Pawboost, and scanning for a microchip at the vet, I believe we did our due diligence trying to find any hypothetical owners.
We got an update from our vet yesterday that the fecal sample that we left at the first visit tested positive for giardia (a parasite you get from drinking contaminated water that causes an infection in your intestines) which also lends credibility to the theory that he has been living outdoors for some time and lessened my concern that I just stole someone’s pet. Because if he was someone’s pet, he wasn’t being cared for in a way that was keeping him safe. On the 18th, he goes back to the vet to get neutered and microchipped because now that he is officially part of our household, I wouldn’t want to lose him if he somehow escapes confinement in our basement.
The vet told us to continue keeping the cats separate as giardia is highly contagious between cats, and even though his first FIV test came back negative, another one is needed in two months to doublecheck there wasn’t any exposure that wouldn’t show on the first test due to the dormant period. Over the next two months, we can slowly start introducing the cats through the door and then through chicken wire as they adjust to each other’s smells and presence. I am looking forward to getting through this transitional period, but I will not rush it to keep them both safe & secure in our home.
I’m reaching the end of the email limit, so I will cut this short. Expect a Part 2 with more pics, more thoughts & information, and the debut of his name!
~The Overstimulated