That Darn Cat

So Tuesday night, I'm getting ready to go to bed and my mom calls and tells me a story about how there's a little kitten wandering around the neighborhood. My mom, sister and our neighbors were trying to catch the cat, and it jumped into a window well.

My 16 year old sister, was the only one small enough to get into the well, but she was terrified that she wouldn't be able to get out (it was a tall one). Well, she gets in, and the cat freaks and makes terrible noises and my sister leaps out like a piece of toast from the toaster. At this point my mom is laughing her ass off. The cat eventually got out of the window well (by climbing over our neighbors head) and got away.

Wednesday, I come by my parents to pick up Maddie, and my mom comes in to let us know that the kitten is back and eating some cat food we left out for it. So my 16 year old sister (Cailey) and I go outside to see him. When we get there, he's gone, but we can hear him meowing...so we follow the noise and he's under the neighbors deck.

For a good 30 minutes my sister and I are on either side of the deck watching the little cat. He's just a little guy (looks to be 8-9 weeks) and scared as shit. He's not feral because he KNOWs people...he's just scared of them. So we bust 0ut some tuna, put it in a cage and hope that he walks right into our little trap.

Before I proceed, our neighborhood is a well populated suburb, we don't get many strays. One of the other neighbors said there were more kittens and it looks like they were dumped (by assholes), but we haven't seen any others. And it is very obvious that this kitten will not survive if he's outside for much longer. We're looking down the barrel of frosty nights, and this little kitty isn't big enough to stay warm.

Back to the story...eventually the cat starts moving towards the tuna and out from under the deck, but he gets about 4-5feet from a person and won't come any closer. So I start meowing (sometimes one of my mom's cats will respond when I meow) and what do you know? Little Orphan Kitty starts talking to me. For 45 goddamn minutes, I am laying in the grass in 40 degree weather, in my work clothes meowing at a stray cat. He keeps walking towards me, but just as quickly backs up.

After a while, he sees his escape, runs past me and through the fence and bolts down the street. At this point we're like "screw it, lets pack it in", but as we get ready to go in the house, we see kitty coming back towards the house, meowing.

We lure him closer with tuna, and eventually he comes into the garage, and me, Mike and my sister are on the floor trying to keep him in the garage so we can close the door. SUCCESS. Kitty is now trapped in the garage.

At this point, we decide to leave him alone to recover from the course of the evening and let him eat some food, and drink some water. We're all relieved because now we know we won't find a dead orange cat in our front yard.

We have dinner, and strategize about how to get kitty into the cage (we can't let him roam around the garage with the cars in there). To make a long story short, we traumatize the cat further by using push brooms to corner him into the cage.

(I'm sorry this sounds terrible! But this cat is scared and hungry and thinks we're going to eat it - we really couldn't get near it)

As it stands, we have this adorable 8-9ish week old, orange tabby sitting in a cage in our garage. He's already adapting pretty well, yesterday he let me pet him, and went into the little kitty trance when you find just the right spot under his chin. I've contacted a couple of local vets about getting him/her spayed/neutered and basic vaccinations, but haven't heard back from any yet.

Mike and I have talked about keeping him (especially if we throw down beaucoup bucks getting him vetted), but our priority is Maddie. If we can't get kitty to get along with - or at least be ambivalent towards - Maddie, then we can't keep it.

Our master plan for the moment is to call the vet (probably our normal vet, if we don't hear back from anyone), and take him in, get him a clean bill of health and then move him to me/Mike's house so we can keep him in our spare bathroom. Once he's inside it will be a lot easier to socialize him. After that, we'll have either fallen in love with him and become unable to bear the thought of parting with him, or we will find a new home for him.

Any words of wisdom? Any advice?

OH YEAH: I also meant to post a link to a description of Guy Fawkes Day yesterday in the title...that has since been fixed.