Rescuing Stray Cats Is Hard, but Necessary

I just dropped off a cat I rescued to the SPCA yesterday, and I’m still an emotional mess about it. Goddamn my empathy. It sucks being a caring person. It really does. When I see a cat on the streets, I just feel compelled to help it. FML.
This was the 6th cat I’ve taken off of the street, if you include my own. It’s funny because I wasn’t even a CAT PERSON until I moved in with an ex a few years ago who had 3 cats. He worked very strange hours at a vet hospital, and it wasn’t long before I was spending the nights he was working with 3 loving, affectionate kitties piled up on my lap. He was a fucking jerk to me, so I moved away after two and a half years of living together. I honestly think I only stayed with him as long as I did because I didn’t want to leave his cats.
I moved to a different city and started working as a pro domme at a dungeon. It was actually a rented rowhome converted into a dungeon. There was a sweet boy cat who lived there — he had been abandoned by some bitch who worked for my friend. This horrible evil person had asked my friend to please watch her cat Whiskey temporarily, then ended up abandoning him there (I can’t stand anyone who would take on a pet, then abandon it.)
My friend unexpectedly lost the rental house and was planning to move to a commercial space, so she couldn’t take Whiskey with her. She knew I was mourning the loss of my ex’s three cats and asked if I wanted to adopt Whiskey.

Whiskey was a very cool, laidback sort of cat. He wasn’t too much into playing. He preferred to lie next to me while I worked on my laptop in my tiny studio apartment, and sometimes we’d go hang out in the building hallway to give us both a little space.
Barely two years after I adopted him, Whiskey developed nose cancer. He went downhill pretty quickly. Caring for him during his illness, where he would sometimes have explosive nosebleeds, was traumatic. Having him put to sleep when he clearly was suffering too much was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
In my gradual transition from dog to cat person, the fascination and love I developed for the feline species made me start noticing stray cats on the street. Quite honestly, I never did before. I think most people don’t. We barely even notice homeless HUMANS roaming the streets and sleeping on sidewalks..much less CATS.
Animal activists estimate there could be 60,000 stray and feral cats in my city. This is a huge problem. Honestly, I don’t think nearly enough attention is paid to it. First off, these are little lives that are endangered..many of them need vet care or should be spayed and neutered. Secondly, cats running amok are decimating the bird population and disrupting the ecosystem.
I personally believe every cat deserves a home. Losing Whiskey was so difficult for me that I swore I would never adopt another cat, but six months later a Facebook friend posted a photo of a little cutie that her neighbor had been feeding. Unfortunately, someone was poisoning the stray cats in my friend’s area, so I felt an urgent need to take this little girl and save her life. Plus, she looked a lot like Whiskey.
It’s interesting and very fulfilling to bring home a feral cat and watch your love and care help her blossom into a loving companion. My cat went from a little 5 pound waif hiding inside my oven (I was frantic when, for the first couple of days after bringing her home, I couldn’t find her. I have since learned it’s best to keep a new cat closed up in a room..live and learn) to an 8 pound, healthy little furball who loves to sit in the window chirping at the birds, chase toy mice down the stairs, has entire conversations with me during the day, and curls up next to me at night.

After I bought my house a little over a year ago, I noticed several stray cats on my street. Some of them were so scrawny. Yes, I became THAT person. The crazy cat lady who feeds strays and ferals on her porch. But I wasn’t content to do just that.
I started looking into how to participate in T-n-R programs, and investigating how to get vet care for stray cats at a discount. Caring for my OWN cat was expensive enough, even with pet insurance. I couldn’t afford to take every stray on my street to the vet for a physical, vaccines, etc.
The first cat I rescued off my street was a neutered male I called Buddy 1. (Every male cat I rescue, I name Buddy. I figure if I give him a non-specific, very common name, I won’t get too attached. Yeah, right.) After just a few days of feeding him, he would come up close and rub against my leg. He would lurch up to my hand, wanting to be petted. Sometimes he would ignore the plate of Friskies, plop down on my porch and lie ON my hand, as if he were craving attention even more than food.
This definitely had been someone’s pet at one time, I thought. He totally won my heart and with a brutal hot summer just beginning, I couldn’t imagine leaving him outdoors to suffer in the heat.
If you already have an indoor cat, the first thing you have to do before you bring a stray inside is TAKE THE STRAY TO A VET. You have to make sure the stray doesn’t have an diseases that could get passed to your cat. Buddy 1 went into my cat carrier with no problem..he trusted me already. He was such a good cat at the vet. The vet couldn’t believe he was a stray. “This cat is definitely not feral,” the vet said, petting him.
It’s also important to check for a microchip, to make sure you’re not kidnapping someone’s pet. Buddy 1 didn’t have one.
I brought him home and put him in his own room with litter, toys, water, food, and stuff to climb on. Then I proceeded to post his photo all over the interwebs, to do my due diligence to make sure someone wasn’t missing him. I posted on PawBoost, the local animal control Facebook page, and Nextdoor.
Nobody claimed him. But a woman who had recently lost her cat fell in love with his photo, just like I had fallen in love with MY cat when I saw her picture. She messaged me about adopting him.

Now, I am super paranoid about making sure any cat I rescue goes into the right hands. Before Buddy 1, I had rescued a couple of dumpster cats in my old neighborhood, and good friends had adopted them. So I wasn’t worried about what kind of home I was delivering them to. But in this case, I didn’t know this woman. So I asked if she would meet me first. We met up at a cafe. I quickly learned that she was an even crazier cat lady than me. She’s even an artist who paints pictures of cats. Also, it was clear that she agreed with me that cats belong indoors. She said Buddy 1 would be a well-loved, well-cared-for indoor cat. I then felt comfortable inviting her to my house to meet Buddy 1.
Like me, she fell in love with him right away. He snuggled up to her, purring. The only thing I asked from her was reimbursement for my vet bills, which she happily paid.
Every once in a while, she sends me text messages with photos of Buddy 1, chilling in his new home. She is clearly crazy about him, and I couldn’t be happier.
I was so hoping for a similar outcome with Buddy 2 (the cat I just dropped off at the SPCA), but, unfortunately, I couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to adopt out a cat. It’s kitten season, so most people involved in stray rescue have more fosters than they can handle, and the shelters are full.
Buddy 2 is so similar to Buddy 1, that I think they might be siblings. Buddy 2 would also beg for pets when I fed him, and was very friendly and loving. I found out after I brought him in, though, that Buddy 2 has a little bit of an edge to him. He is very independent and gets frustrated when you try to thwart that. I found out from the vet that he’s only a year old. I wish I knew more about his background. Unlike my pre-existing cat, who had to be trained to use the litter box, Buddy 2 used it right away. Never peed outside of the box at all, despite being an un-neutered male.
I followed the same process with Buddy 2 as I did with Buddy 1. I posted his photo everywhere. Nobody claimed him, and sadly, nobody wanted to adopt him, either. I got a list of no-kill shelters and rescues from Alley Cat Allies, which included names and phone numbers of people willing to foster.
I think I must have contacted about 20 shelters and rescues. Nobody had space. I emailed one of the foster volunteers. He said he might have space once he adopted out a FIV+ cat he was fostering. He had about 6 foster cats already.
I’m learning that the people who are willing to step up to the plate and do T-n-R, and care for and/or take in stray cats are a special breed. Many of them are totally overloaded. They spend a lot of money and time doing this, sometimes to their own detriment (for ex, they will forego medical appointments for themselves just to make sure they have enough money to take a cat to the vet), and many of them have a house full of cats.
It makes me wish more people would step up to the plate to help. It makes me also wish my city would do more to curb the stray population — like legally requiring people to spay or neuter their pets, and passing a law to keep owners from letting their pets outside.
Anyway, my potential foster who said he might be able to take Buddy 2 friended me on Facebook. I quickly learned from his Facebook page that he is a racist (which I find puzzling. How can you be an animal lover and a racist at the same time? Seems incompatible, but what do I know?) I feel very strongly about racism and couldn’t see myself handing Buddy 2 over to him.
Meanwhile, I was housing Buddy 2 in one of my stray bedrooms, and he was NOT happy at all. He was completely destroying the carpet around the bedroom door in his attempts to get out.
I had to start letting him out to get exercise, which meant I had to keep MY cat closed up in a room. It got really stressful after a while, trying to juggle these cats, neither of which was happy closed up in a room..both of whom were completely destroying my carpet!
I tried the method for introducing 2 cats that all experts recommend — feeding the cats on either side of a door, yada yada. Well, this just made my cat decide she didn’t want to eat. Instead of associating the good process of eating with the unfamiliar cat, she associated her fear of the unfamiliar cat with eating. And just stopped doing it.
At one point, feisty little Buddy 2 escaped out of his room, and bolted right downstairs to..under the couch, where my cat loves to sleep during the day. Have you ever tried chasing a 1 yr old cat down the stairs? You simply can’t outrun it. Believe me, I tried. By the time I got down there, hissing and swatting had erupted.
I grabbed a pillow and shoved it between them. I know better than to get in the middle of a cat fight. I’m not sure Buddy 2 had ever seen a pillow before, so he ran from it. From then on, whenever I noticed a fight starting between the 2 cats, I’d just shake the pillow at Buddy 2, and he’d back off.
For about 3 weeks, I didn’t do much else besides trying to find Buddy 2 a home, and supervising cat interactions to make sure nobody got hurt. There would be times when the 2 cats would chill out around each other, but they were few and far between. For the most part, they would stare at each other creepily and stalk each other. They’d start out 10 feet away from each other, and before you know it, one of them would gradually creep up on the other, as if they thought neither me nor the other cat was paying attention. It was pretty comical to watch, actually. I shot a video of this and totally plan on superimposing the theme from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” over it. I think it’ll go viral.
After 3 weeks, they didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Brief periods of detente would end after a while, resulting in stalking, chasing, or swatting. Friends told me that maybe after Buddy 2 got neutered, he’d chill out. But honestly, it wasn’t just him causing problems. My female cat was wonderful around me but tended to be petrified of anyone who wasn’t me. And another cat in the house just heightened her pre-existing anxiety by a huge factor.
Also, she started her fair share of attempted territorial fights. At one point, after I stopped Buddy 2 from swatting her, she decided she didn’t want anything to do with me. She hid under the couch and when I reached out to pet her, she shirked away like “this is all YOUR fault for bringing this jerk into my house in the first place.”
I knew Buddy 2 was taking this all in stride, but I was very worried about my cat. Finally, someone from the state SPCA notified me that space had opened up and told me I could bring him during a certain time slot, and they would be ready for him.
It’s a weird mix of emotions when you realize you have to let go of a rescue cat. I had gotten really attached to Buddy 2 during those 3 weeks, even though his interactions with my cat often frustrated me. I knew this wasn’t the ideal home for him, but at the same time, it was hard thinking of displacing him from the neighborhood where he’d been living.
I often opened up the windows for him, so he could still keep an eye on the street where he’d been sleeping under my car and hanging out with the other strays. He would often sniff at the air, as if he was comforted by all the familiar smells, even if he couldn’t still roam around out there. I felt like I was betraying him by forcing him to move away from that familiarity.
I also felt like I was abandoning him.
When I took him to the SPCA, they had me fill out a long questionnaire. They asked about his personality, his habits…what toys does he like to play with, etc. This gave me some comfort, since it seemed like they would really try to match him with the most compatible home. They had a behaviorist come in and assess him to make sure he wasn’t aggressive. A vet checked him out, health-wise. I waited in the lobby while all this was taking place.
Then a staff member told me they would accept him. I was free to go. I started to cry as I was leaving. Then I remembered, they hadn’t given me my carrier back.
The receptionist led me into the room where Buddy 2 was being held. He was still in his carrier, inside of a giant cage. He looked a little scared, but was calm.
Boy was it hard to see him like that. I totally lost it. I gave him some comforting words and last pets, and tried to not totally break down in their holding area. The vet tech scruffed him and pulled him out of the carrier and handed it back to me. I tried to wait until I got back to my car to just lose it, but wasn’t very successful.
Today, I’m battling the guilt I feel over abandoning him with trying to reassure myself that he’ll end up in a better place. I got him off the streets. That’s what counts. I have to let go and trust that the shelter will find him a good home, with people who will love him as much as I do.
And my cat seems much happier now that she has the whole house to herself again. She was very affectionate last night, and instigated a little fetch game we always played before bed — which she hadn’t done when Buddy 2 was around, because he’d chase her every time she ran anywhere.
I’m going to miss Buddy 2, though. It’s not as deep of a grief as I felt when Whiskey died, but there is a part of me that’s thinking, “I can’t. I just can’t do this again. I can’t bring home another foster cat, just to have to let him go again. It will crush me.”
I’ve actually brought in 3 strays from my street in the past year. There’s only one left — a little black and white feral who’s too scared to even approach me, but sleeps every morning in one of the flower pots on my porch.
He won’t get too close to me, but it looks like he has something wrong with one of his eyes, and he paws at his ears a lot like he has mites.
I’m already asking my fellow rescuers how I should proceed to get him to a vet.
Copyright 2018 S. Wade
