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Marco’s Web Log

The purpose of this page was originally to keep my friends and family updated on my experiences with a kitten I adopted in 2002. It has now become a record of a colony of feral cats at Evergreen Valley College. If you’ve also recently acquired a kitten, or are thinking of adopting, you might enjoy reading this as well. For the background on the whole story, See the first entry.

Click the small pictures to see a larger version. Feel free to send me feedback or comments.

The Gym Triplets (21 September 2008)

Evergreen Valley College is also home to Accel Middle College. Students in this program take college courses during the day on campus and high school courses in the afternoon. The afternoon classes are held in the Physical Education building. The students had noticed some feral kittens in the shrubbery behind the building, and one of the teachers asked me if I could talk to the students about feral cats. Afterwards, one of the students asked to work on trapping ferals as part of her Community Project.

We met today on campus to clean out the area where we had set traps several years ago (and the area needed cleaning out; old soda cans and bottles had accumulated in the area). Before we were able to start the cleanup, we saw three virtually identical gray tabby kittens. I went back to get some cat food, and we put it on a plate, and they came out to eat. Here are pictures of the triplets. We will start trapping tomorrow.

Click any picture to see a larger version.

gray tabby cat looking for food one cat advancing towards plate all cats eating two cats eating, one looking up at camera cat huched over, looking at camera two cats near plate cat with head in sun cats looking to near right two cats in background, cleaning themselves; one in foreground cat resting in foreground; cat in background licking chops

Status: September 2008

We had taken a long break from cat rescue, because the room we were using for our “recovery room” was put into use, so we had no place to put any cats. The administration of the college also told us we couldn’t feed our colony of ferals any more, so I had to take Misha home for a week. It was a very tense week at home while she established her credentials as top cat and had both Marco and Big Tony backing off when she wanted to get to the foodbowl.

After some negotiation with the campus administration, we were able to start feeding the cats again, under these conditions:

  1. The foodbowls have to be away from the door to the language department office.
  2. The food has to be taken away at night so that it doesn’t attract unwanted critters (like raccoons).
  3. The cats aren’t allowed into the classroom. This one has been the most difficult, as Misha stil thinks she is enrolled in my classes.

January 2008

In case you were following her saga, Tika was adopted by one of the students in my Psychology class. The student renamed the cat to Cambers, and the cat is doing very well, and getting along just wonderfully well with the dachshund that shares her house.

Entries 14 Sep 2005–22 Dec 2007 >>