CK’s story: A wild cat who became a house cat

In the spring of 2011, I spotted an unfamiliar cat in my backyard late one evening. The sun was setting, and I could not tell in the fading light just what color the cat was. I saw the cat a few evenings and nights after that. It always ran away as soon as I would step outside. I would call to it, and tried to approach it when I would see it in the yard at night while coming home from class, but it always ran away. A week had passed and I still had no idea if the cat was male or female. The cat was hanging around because my parents and I had been taking our table scraps from dinner outside and putting them where it could find them.

Then one morning, I spotted the cat in the driveway. One look at it in the morning sunlight told me it was female. The tortoiseshell coloring proved it. She watched me as I walked toward my car. Still, she ran away before I could get remotely close to her. I noticed she had an odd gait as she ran. When she stopped momentarily to look back, I realized why. Her right-front forepaw was obviously broken and had not properly healed, causing the leg to be bent at an odd angle. Instantly, I felt even more sympathy for the frightened cat.

I became determined to find a way to make the cat understand she could trust me.

She continued to hang around more often once she realized she could get food at my house. Her injured leg and the way she walked caused my parents to refer to her as the “crippled kitty”, but I felt that was demeaning to the cat. So, we decided to shorten “crippled kitty” to “CK”. Still, as more time passed, CK refused to let us get close. She ran away before we could get a chance to get close enough to see if she had any more injuries. We had no idea how her leg was injured. I guessed it was possible she had been hit by a car long before she showed up at our house.

In late summer, I came home from one evening to discover a surprise. I walked past a stack of cinder blocks that were beside our carport. A loud growl sounded from a gap between two stacks. The growl was followed by a tiny meow. I stepped closer to get a look and discovered four kittens in the gap, along with CK. My parents and I had had no idea she was pregnant. Of course, since she never would let us get close to her, we never would have noticed.

CK’s motherly instincts kicked in as I approached. Her growling got louder, and she actually came out of the gap to put herself between her babies and me. I knew she would relax when she realized I would not harm her babies. I sat down on the ground a few feet away and talked to her. I kept my voice calm and quiet. Eventually, one of the kittens grew curious enough to get past his momma to come to me. It cautiously sniffed my hand when I held it out before it ran back to CK.

CK & 3 of the kittens from her first litter.

For two weeks, I repeated this process of sitting by where the kittens were. CK would still growl at me, but every day that passed, I noticed her growl became quieter. I talked to her and did my best to show her I was no threat. Then one day, I actually sat right next to the gap. The kittens clambered over my lap, playing on me as though I was their personal jungle gym. CK had finally trusted me enough to let me close to her babies. It was the breakthrough I needed.

On the third week, CK surprised me by actually greeting me at my car as I returned home from work. She even allowed me to pet her on the head. Being that close, I finally realized why she had been so afraid of people. There were tell-tale signs of abuse. There was a small place on her side that resembled the signs of a

gunshot wound. To me, it looked like someone with a bb gun had used her for target practice. Her left eye was missing as well. She flinched away when I made quick movements. If I tried to touch her anywhere past her neck, she whirled around and tried to swat at me in defense.

I soon learned how to pet her without her trying to bite or claw me as a defensive move. As long as I kept my hand on her head or neck, she was fine. So that’s what I did. I would only pet her where she was comfortable with my touch, and she learned to trust me.

She began greeting me every day after work. I would walk over to the kittens and play with them for a while. Soon, though, my parents and I had to find homes for the four kittens. We had no trouble finding the kittens homes once they were old enough to leave CK. However, I knew that it would take a special person to want to take CK home. After all, we couldn’t keep her forever. We live too close to a busy road, and I was afraid she would get run over because I had watched her cross the road multiple times. Plus, there were coyotes roaming around. I didn't want her to become their next meal. I also did not have the money to have CK spayed nor have her injured leg looked at. I knew she needed to go to a new home, but finding the right home for a cat like CK can be difficult.

CK had another litter of kittens that following spring then another litter in late fall of 2012. We found homes for all the kittens from the spring litter. It was the third litter that we struggled to find homes for. As the weeks passed, nobody contacted us in regards to the kittens. We knew we had to find them homes, and we had to find one for CK too. We couldn’t afford to keep taking care of them all. I knew if we took the cats to the county shelter, the kittens would possibly find homes. However, I knew CK wouldn’t. Nobody would want to pay to adopt a crippled cat that did not like to be petted much. Plus, the county shelter was not a no-kill shelter. I knew I would be sending CK to her death if I took her there.

Then in mid-January of this year (2013), we contacted a local no-kill, non-profit animal shelter in our area known as Abandoned Angels. We told them we had a mother cat and five kittens that we were trying to find homes for. The shelter owner told us she had no room to take them in, but she could help us out in another way. She owner told us that as long as none of the kittens or the mother cat were wild, she could arrange transport for them to go to a foster home out of the state. It was then I became afraid CK would once again be left behind as her babies went to a new home.

I told the shelter owner that CK was not a wild cat and that she wasn’t inherently aggressive. I explained to her that CK would allow people to pet her, but only on her terms. I explained my theory of possible past abuse CK might have suffered, and thankfully, the shelter owner understood. She showed up at our house a couple weeks later with pet carriers.

My mom warned me to be careful when I went to put CK in the carrier. After all, she had probably never been in one. I walked out onto the porch, and picked CK up. I actually picked her up and held her for the first time since she had arrived at my house. CK never struggled to get away. She never growled or even tried to defend herself from me. Instead, she leaned against me as though to snuggle against me. The cat that had once ran away from me as soon as she saw me had allowed me to pick her up and put her in a cat carrier. I shut the door on the carrier, expecting CK to freak out since she wasn’t in the same one as her babies, but she never did.

Abandoned Angels took CK and her babies to a meeting spot with another shelter owner from out of state. CK and her kittens were taken to a foster home in Pennsylvania. They all settled in pretty quickly. The kittens all found homes within weeks of being taken in by their foster mom. Still, I wondered how CK would fare. Would anyone ever want to adopt a cat with a deformed leg and a missing eye? Would anyone take the time like I did to show her humans could be trusted enough to be friends?

The answer was yes. CK’s foster mom formed a bond with CK while she took care of her and the kittens. The foster mom couldn’t bear to part with CK and adopted her. The last update I received on CK was that her new owner had taken her to the vet to get the medical attention she needed that I had been unable to afford.

In just under two years, CK went from being a terrified, skittish cat in Tennessee to a beloved house cat in Pennsylvania. Every second I spent trying to gain her trust had been worth it. Thanks to my efforts to show her people could be trusted as well as help from Abandoned Angels, CK got the second chance I knew she deserved.

She was meowing (not hissing!) at me here.