So about a year ago, we decided our property needed a couple kitties. Peter's cat that he had during his childhood had just passed away and in his absence all the neighborhood cats started taking over the place. So right before Christmas my MIL and I took off to get a new cat for the Keyser Compound.
So Bentley joined the family!
Well, it just so happened that the humane society was doing buy one kitty get one free. So we also added Oswald!
Skip ahead to this summer, and we had a mama kitty and her 4 kittens show up. We attempted to capture them a couple times but had no luck. So needless to say our cats we got to keep the other cats out didn't do their job! Then there were 7 cats!
A month or so ago, I noticed that our mama kitty was looking a bit pregnant again! Oh boy!
This is when I decided that something needed to be done! I mean, we're literally feeding the entire neighborhood here!
So after some chats with local cat charities, we decided it would be best to try and capture the cats and at least get them fixed. However there was one kitty that I would like to think I'd built a little bond with. He was definitely the most friendly of all the wild cats and he wasn't spooked by me like the others. Since he was just 5 months old, I did some research and found some advice to suggest that with time he could be domesticated. Since he was the first of the kitties that we were able to catch, I decided to give it a chance.
So we brought Peaches as the children had named him, into the bathroom and started the slow process of making friends with him. He wasn't super skittish and in the few days we had him in there, we were definitely making some progress. I was really hopeful that he would become my buddy!
Until I came into our bathroom to see this! I couldn't believe it and went in to full on panic mode! Peaches was no where to be seen. Peaches had staged a jail break!
I didn't sleep that night as I worried about him and what if he died in my vents! Or what if he somehow made his way to the furnace and broke my brand new furnace that we just spent $8000 on! I was trying to brainstorm ideas to get him out or sat in the quiet house hoping I'd hear him move and have an idea which floor of the house he was on.
We dumped flour down each vent so we could see if there were footprints of him moving around. We took the vents off all the bathrooms and put cat food near them all hoping he would come and explore but after another day, there was still no sign of him. Until that evening I heard a big "clunk clunk clunk". That would be Peaches falling from the second story down to the first! At least we knew where he was now! Claw marks in the dust of the vent that dropped to the first floor confirmed it for us!
I felt a little bit better knowing he was on the first floor, because we knew we had a vent that we needed to fix that was disconnected under the house. If he made it to the first floor, surely in no time he would find his way to that opening. So we just waited and hoped we wouldn't start smelling anything dead. If he made it to the crawlspace we figured he would have no problem finding his way to a vent and back outside. So we waited and watched for any sign of him. A week passed with no sign of him. But then, all of a sudden there he was prancing across the yard. The little fart came right over to the sliding glass door and stared me down. I think he may have had some choice words for me.
He did it. I never thought a cat could have outsmarted me, but somehow this guy successfully escaped our house. Well done, Peaches. Well done!
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