Cat Scratch Fever

The cats are feral for all intents and purposes. Trust me, I spent a long, long time researching the difference between stray cats and feral cats. Feral cats have never trusted humans in their life, stray cats have spent a good bit of their lives with humans, but have no human caretaker at this point in their lives. The really weird difference is that feral cats almost never make noise (other than to hiss at you to go away.) They never learned that meowing will get them attention (or they learned it will get them negative attention) so the just don't do it. It's pretty weird to have cats that make no noise. They really only meowed when it snowed and they didn't like it.

However, I refused to call my cats feral. It's a negative term and it makes my kitties sound mean. They aren't they just have trouble trusting humans. But we are working on that. We are slowly trying to earn their trust. It's hard since we have been inside all winter and they didn't have much chance to get used to us. Hopefully in the summer when we are outside a lot swimming in our pool we will become normal to them.

We started out with three cats. Little Caiti was born in April 2008 and Inky was born in May 2009. The old homeowners hadn't even bothered to get the cats spade/neutered so we had to trap them in humane animal traps and take them to the Humane Society (love them) to get fixed and get rabies shots. I don't know how the cats got together since they are different ages. But it's probably a sad story so try not to think about it too much.

The third cat was Big Ugly. She was mean. She was very territorial and would hiss and swipe her claws at me whenever I put out food or water. So, I told V that either she left or all the cats had to leave because I was afraid to go out in the backyard (yes, I know it's silly but remember, I never liked animals before meeting mine). Luckily, an amazing woman at the Humane Society offered to take Big Ugly home as a barn cat if I offered to pay for her to be neutered. Thus, the end of Big Ugly at this house. But I don't think the other kitties cared - they seemed to play a lot more when Big Ugly wasn't there to boss them around.