The Sad Black Cat Who Lived Alone for 5 Years
Recently, I adopted a scraggly black cat from the animal shelter I work at. I noticed Bonny since I started at the shelter a few years prior. He was all alone in a tiny dark cubicle, with no direct view of the outside world. Back then our shelter was in a really difficult situation — we were severely over-crowded, underfunded and very under-staffed. We were also facing eviction from our landlord who wanted to develop the land for commercial properties.
I asked our shelter founder why Bonny had to be on his own even though he was obviously extremely social. Bonny clearly loved company and attention — whenever I walked past, he would press his little nose against his gate and paw enthusiastically at it. When I entered his cramped cubicle — which, sadly, was also being used for storage, as we really had no space — he would leap up onto a shelf and vigorously rub his snotty face all over mine.
Sadly, Mr Personality had to be isolated from the other cats and moved out from a large shared unit into his tiny storage cubicle because he had gotten into too many fights with the other cats. Also, he was FIV positive, which made those fights dangerous as the primary mode of FIV transmission was through bites.
“Is he aggressive to other cats?” I asked dubiously, recalling the bouncy little boy I encountered. “No,” the shelter…
