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 original trio of cats, Rocket, Jasper, and Misha, is no longer around. I adopted Jasper, Rocket only shows up once every three or four weeks, and Misha just disappeared around the end of May. Our best hope is that someone picked her up and adopted her.
Meanwhile, we have a group of eight cats who come to the feeding station on a regular basis: Ody (stands for O.D. - Orange Dude), Noisy, Moo (white with black spots), Billy Bushytail (a rare tri-color male), Carla, Ringo, Bootsie, and Chai. The last picture is a cat living in the hills behind the campus.
A long hiatus, given that we haven’t been able to use the room at the school to keep cats while they recover from neutering. Misha, Jasper, and Rocket (our original ferals) are all doing well. Their momcat has become somewhat more approachable. Cathy and I are able to pet her while she eats, but she won’t let anyone else near.
There are two new kittens on campus. The gray and white cat does not have a name yet. I have named the tabby with the white chest and paws “Captain Billy.” I have no idea where the name came from; it just popped into my head. Go figure. Click any picture to see a larger version.
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.
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:
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.
