Fay, a/k/a Peggy

Well, now that the garden season is over, I am going to post about my involvement in what I call feral cat rescue.  I do not officially "cat rescue", but I've been feeding the feral cats in my neighboorhood for years now.  I have been lucky enough to have socialized a few of these ferals to the point of them being able to be rescued and placed with different rescue organizations around the area.   We have made 3 cat shelters for the cold winters for those cats that are lucky enough to discover them and actually want to live in them.

I am going to write today about our latest cat rescue.  The picture of her is from the end of June when she was first photographer in our yard.  She has been re-named "Fay".  Fay first came to our yard sometime last Spring.  I could tell right away that this was a cat who had been dumped.  She was super friendly and hung real close to our house at all times.  It soon became apparent that she was pregnant.  We were calling her Peggy, short for pregnant and that fact that she was a little pig at the food dish, highly food motivated.  Apparently Peggy was cruising the neighboorhood, and we found out that the little kids across the street were also feeding her from time to time.  She was friendly enough that they were able to pick her up and carry her to my youngest daughter's house and deposited her in the kitchen and said "here, we found you another kitty".  She already had 3.  The kids were told to take the cat back outside, which they did.  So, it was at this point that the thought of finding a rescue to officially take her in, especially since she was pregnant.  We located the Melrose Humane Society and they agreed immediately to take her.  She was too far pregnant for them to spay her so they agreed to take her and spay her after the kittens.  She ended up having 4 kittens, was spayed, vetted and put up for adoption.  Only problem was, she was one of those cats that does not thrive in the shelter invironment.  She became more unhappy and became not so nice with the shelter workers.  She was not friendly to people who came to look at her, and in general, was miserable.  My ex-husband agreed to take her and foster her.  He promptly renamed her Fay and she is now with him.  She came out of the cat carrier purring.  My daughter was able to cut her nails that were dagger long and were getting stuck in the rug as she would extend her nails as she purred, which was all the time.  I was visiting with her at his house and she put her paws up my legs and was purring, her dewclaws (both) became stuck in my jeans and my skin underneath.  OUCH!  She was unable to retract the dewclaw and became really scarred, her eye pupils got very big.  I did not know if she would bite out of fear.  My ex-hubby tried to help her release the dewclaw, with us all saying, watah out, she might bite you, but he did not care (and she did not bite).  What I had to do was drop my jeans (in front of him and my daughter) and take them off in order to let her release that dewclaw!  It worked and she walked away a little scared, but recovered right away.  I rushed to put my jeans back on, heeeeeeeeheeeeeee.  Anyways, my daughter insisted she would put on the vet collar so she would not bite and would have to cut those dagger nails.  The deed was done without any problem.  This is the cat that the shelter said was unadoptable and within hours of being home, all these events took place.  My ex seems to be attached to her so it remains uncertain if she is being fostered to be rehomed or if she has found her forever home.