The very best part of all this is the enormous change in Dagda. I went to the shelter ,where he'd lived for at least 5 years, in May to look at a social feral Himalayan who turned out to be very feral still. They'd just opened up their new FIV+ room so I stopped in there on impulse. Dagda (then called Blackberry) mooched over slowly as I sat on the floor and leaned against me for some fuss. As I turned to fuss another cat, he mooched away to curl up with another cat. There was something about him, something that told me he had to get out of there. I called him over again, he hesitated about moving again but came, and I told him I was taking him.
He was in my isolation bedroom with two others from the FIV+ room for a few weeks and spent all that time under a chair. He had dental surgery right away, his mouth was badly infected and bloody. When I opened his isolation door, he did nothing for a few days, just stayed under his chair, then spent several more days sitting in the doorway. His progress was slow and each step to becoming a "normal cat" gave me great joy. The day he walked across the living room, stepped out onto the sunny deck and flopped down. The day he got up onto the bed. The first night he stayed on the bed with me, and decided he wanted to be there every night - sometimes to the detriment of my sleep. I watched his tail gradually move up, first so that it was straight out and then, one wonderful day, straight up in the air. I grinned from ear to ear the day I saw him playing with a toy by himself, pouncing on it and tossing it in the air. And now he races around after the kittens. I had never met a depressed cat before, had never thought about it. I think his life at the shelter had simply become a round of eating and sleeping.
Catfamily is right, Cattulus doesn't mind at all and simply loves the attention. I occasionally hear him squeal when Dagda sits on his legs accidentally! His brother gets washed by the far more delicate, and much smaller, Belle.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks