Feral Fables

The kittens, all 5 of them, were not born at our house. They were born a few houses down on the other side of the alley, under a garage which is somewhat elevated. Snow (the mother cat) brought them down here to our house, under the deck when they were about 6 weeks old. They nestled under the deck, close to the house near where the dryer vents for warmth. I remember that winter during the really cold days I would intentionally do laundry to keep the dryer going, imagining that this would help them keep warm. Another thing we did after a snow storm, was we tried to fashion a box with a blanket and a cover. We shoved it under the deck thinking this would help, but it was never used. It was pretty pathetic looking I admit in retrospect.

By January, the cats all knew the sound of the screen door opening when I came out to feed them. They would climb out from under the deck and wait for me to come out. We had started to prop the screen door open so they could come into the screen porch that is off the back of the house. We started feeding there because of rain initially and then due to the snow. At least it was protected, even though it was just a screen porch. Eventually, the kittens would actually come onto the porch while I was putting the food out, never getting too close though. The mother-----well, she was a different story. She never came onto the porch with me present and she never ate before her kittens. She waited outside the porch door. When I went back into the house and her kittens were done eating, she would slowly enter the porch and eat. This took an extreme amount of trust on her part. Feral cats are very wary of any place with only one entrance. They are extremely afraid of being cornered. An ideal place for them to live has several ways to enter and leave. But this mother cat had not brought her kittens to just anybody------she had brought them to me, and I think she knew I would not hurt them. I think at some level it was instinctual-------the understanding we had.

Anyway----the back porch does have a corner which is protected by the brick house on to sides and this is where we set-up the next make-shift shelter, which did survive the winter. We took the stool part of one of those "papasan" chairs that you buy from Pier 1. We put a blanket down then the stool on top. We covered it with a bunch more blankets then topped it with a piece of beveled glass we had from a table. We made the entrance somewhat covered to protect them from any wind. That worked!! The cats spent the rest of the winter nestled in that little house on the porch.