The Kittens Who Came in from the Cold

Photo of two tabby cats in shades of brown, black and tan.

When I looked outside this morning I saw there was ice on a puddle out there. So it would seem that colder weather is here, and that reminded me of another fall many moons ago when my little household suddenly increased in size.

I lived in the Poconos at the time, and I already had one and half cats. Wait, what? How does someone have half a cat? Well, I started off with one cat Alci (short for Alcibiades because his shelter name was AJ, and he needed an A name that suited him). He was a dog-like cat who used to enjoy accompanying me on walks and hanging out with me as I did yard work.

One day while we were out in the yard, a large but scrawny gray tabby came over and decided to hang out with us. Then he kept stopping by, and I assumed that this uncollared, intact male cat was a stray and so I adopted him and took him to the vet and got him his shots and got him fixed. I got him a collar and an ID tag with his name Sgt. Gray (as in the Clue character on it).

A short while later I got a phone call. It was from a very worked up woman who said she had my cat, but that she had been taking care of him for awhile now, and well after a lot of confusion we worked out that we knew each other. She lived just down the road, and my cat was obsessed with her dog. Alci used to tag along when she was taking her dog for a walk because like I said Alci was a weird dog-like cat. Anyway the reason my neighbor was so worked up was because when she first started taking care of Sgt. Gray who she had dubbed Snoopy he was in rough shape, and she was convinced that he was getting abused at his previous home. So, when she saw his tag she thought I must have been his original owner, and she saw red. Once we worked out that we had both started caring for this cat after whatever trauma he had suffered we decided the best thing was to share custody of this tough feline.

So, Sgt. Snoops as he came to be known used to split his time between my house, and my neighbor’s, and as we would learn later he had another house as well, and his original name was Toby. (Side note: I lived in a town called Tobyhanna and so many animals were name either Toby or Hannah because most people really aren’t that original when naming their pets.)

It was late summer when I looked outside while Alci and Sgt. Snoops were out there and noticed two orangish balls of fluff out there. Kittens! This soon became a topic of discussion with me and the sergeant’s other mom. What would we do about the stray kittens? I began putting out some food for them, and they would come over to the deck and dine on Kitten Chow and hang out with the big boys, but I had no real plan for trapping them. Then one evening while letting Alci and Sgt. Snoops in for the night one of the kittens decided to follow them inside.

She was skittish at first, but warmed up to me fairly quickly. She was pretty quick to accept fact that she was a house cat now and decided to become a full fledged member or my strange little household. I dubbed her Autumn due to the season and the fact that she had some orange in her coloring. You can see her all grown up on the photo on the left above.

Having gotten the one kitten inside through no real effort on my part, I now wondered what to do about her sibling. I had no plan for how to get this more cautious kitten safely inside and the weather was getting colder. I was worried about that little fluff ball.

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really it was. It was an ice storm to be precise. I looked out at the bitter weather and thought of that poor kitten stuck out there. “Guys, we have to get that kitten inside,” I said to Alci and the sergeant. Alci took one look at the weather out there, and said hell, no, but Sgt. Gray understood the assignment. He went outside, and immediately started acting like a goofball. He tore around the yard, then he climbed up the crabapple tree and started swinging from the branches like a feline acrobat all while ice pelted him. That little kitten could not resist. She wanted to join in the fun, and soon Sgt. Gray had that little ball of orange fluff chasing him up and down the tree and all around the yard. He caught my eye at one point, and the plan was set in motion. I cracked open the front door, and crouched behind it. A blur of gray sprinted into the house with a smaller ball of orange hot on his heels. She realized her mistake at once and freaked out dashing for safety behind the television. Her sister went and kept her company.

The second kitten was also a girl, and I named her Amber because of her coloring. That’s her in the the photo on the right above. Sgt. Snoops, as was his way, decided at one point that he had enough of living with us and moved on to his next place, but Alci, Autumn and Amber remained my cats for years to come. Though Amber warmed up to me eventually she would always remain the more wild and feral of my two girls. When it was time to gather my cats up for vet visits or to go anywhere there was a precise order that things needed to happen. Amber needed to be grabbed first, because if she suspected anything was up, it would be pretty much impossible to catch her. Once caught it was a challenge to hold onto the angry, squirming cat and get her into a cat carrier. Next up was Autumn. She would make a show of hiding, but once I caught her she would surrender to her fate and go limp in my arms. Alci would simply watch the whole spectacle then excitedly follow me to the car to go on an adventure.

Of course, as I said that was many moons ago, and cats, alas, do not live forever. They are all gone now, but I think of them often, and when the weather turns cold I can’t help but think of that cold and stormy night when with the help of an oddball cat with at least three different names I rescued a little kitten.

— Alissa

P.S. If you are a Threadless user and feel like giving a bird a little love. My Pigeon with a Pencil design is now up for scoring in the Threadless Hand Drawn design challenge.