He showed up on my front doorstep one evening around 10 pm, just as I was turning on the outside lights and locking everything up for the night. He was a pitiful looking thing, basically skin and bones with a really noticeable limp. Although he was covered in dirt and his hair was terribly matted, I could tell that he was a tabby cat, and probably a male, as I’ve been told most of them are. As for his limp, I figured he had been in a fight with another stray cat, or maybe even been hit by a car. But when I opened up my screen door to see if I could be of any help to him, he hissed at me and backed up just far enough to stay out of my reach. When I bent down and began to assure him that I was of no danger to him, he was having none of it. My every attempt to get close enough to pet him was meant with more hissing and retreating.
“So,” I said to him in my most non-threatening voice, “if you don’t want to be friends, then why are you here? Are you hungry and just looking for a handout?”
Getting no answer but assuming that might be the case, I went back inside the house, opened up a small can of tuna fish that had been in one of my kitchen cabinets for ages, put about half of it on a plate, filled up a little saucer halfway with milk, and presented what I considered to be a pretty darn good midnight snack, especially on such short notice, to my new friend-not.
I tried to make some small talk with him, but he seemed to have no interest in me whatsoever. But he did keep looking at the tuna fish and milk so I figured I best go back inside so that he could enjoy his meal. And only when the screen door was once again safely between him and me did he finally hurry over to his snack and start devouring it.
It was getting late, so figuring I had done my good deed for the day, I closed the front door and went to bed, sure that I would never see the limping tabby cat again. The next night, though, at the very same time, there he was, this time licking away at his injured leg. So, I fed him the rest of the tuna fish, along with another saucer of milk, and figuring that he was a feral cat that wanted nothing to do with us human beings, I closed everything up for the night and went to bed.
Over the next couple of weeks, the exact thing kept happening. The feral tabby cat would arrive every night just like clockwork, somewhere between 10 and 11 pm. I even went to the grocery store and picked up a bunch of cat food, not wanting to be unprepared for his late-night visits. I also came to the conclusion that he was the perfect pet for me, as all I had to do was feed him. I had owned numerous dogs before, and as loveable as they were, they were a lot of work and responsibility. My feral tabby cat, on the other hand, didn’t need to go on walks or be groomed, or even demand that I get emotionally involved with him. I didn’t even have to clean up after him.
Finally, I decided to mention all of this to my younger brother, who is much more knowledgeable about cats than I am, having owned many of them over the years. He explained that if cats, especially feral cats, can find a reliable source of food and water, they will keep returning to it. What he was concerned about, though, was the limp.
“If he’s been injured,” my brother explained to me, “then we need to capture him and get him to a vet. I’ve got a cage and everything else we need to do that so just name a night and I’ll come on over.”
Well, it turned out that my not very friendly tabby cat was a lot more intelligent than either me or my brother expected. He was simply too smart to go into the capturing cage, no matter what yummy foods we put in there to entice him. And after about a week of failed attempts and missed sleep, my brother and I finally gave up trying. He left the cage with me, though, in case I got an urge to try again, which I finally did one last time, and much to my amazement, the next morning, there he was, trapped and very unhappy about it. So, I immediately called my brother with the good news and without even taking him out of the cage, we quickly transported him to a vet my brother used for his cats. My very generous brother, who loves all creatures great and small, told the vet that he was to spare no expense in getting to the bottom of why Rusty (my brother had given him a name) was limping. He even told the vet we were willing to go up to $500 to make sure the poor thing was healthy again.
The bill, of course, came in at $495, as Rusty apparently needed lots of x-rays and extensive blood work, only to discover that his only problem seemed to be that he might have a hyperactive thyroid. So, after getting this unexpected diagnosis, I called my brother, and asked if he wanted to go with me to pick up the cat. As I was about to get into my car, though, my next-door neighbor saw me and walked over with a question.
“Daryl, didn’t you say you had taken your feral cat to the vet to get it all fixed up?” I nodded “yes” and then my neighbor added, “Then why is he over at my place sleeping under my truck?”
To make an even longer story short, it turned out that there were quite a few tabby cats in my neighborhood (who knew) and that I had captured the wrong one. And not only had we given a perfectly healthy cat a thorough and very expensive physical, but the vet had also shaved his entire left hind leg, so that when it was released later that afternoon his, no doubt, shocked owners must have wondered what in the world had happened to their poor cat.
For whatever reason (maybe because he knew we had been trying to capture him), the real Rusty stopped coming to my front door for almost a year. Then one night he suddenly reappeared, but he looked beyond awful this time, and when he let me pet him for as long as I wanted, I knew something was very, very wrong. So, I called the local animal shelter to come pick him up, and they called me the next morning to let me know that Rusty had some kind of very nasty and contagious cat leukemia and that they had to put him down. They added that were very surprised that he had somehow lived so long in such terrible condition.
When I called my brother to tell him the sad news, he said, “Well, at least Rusty came back to probably the only place where he knew someone actually cared about him, and he even let you pet him and say goodbye. Cats are very strange creatures, Daryl, but they always leave you with a memory or two that you will never forget.”