“Which two are ours?” I asked.
“All 5 of them.” Sue replied.
“No, which two?”
“All of them. Mama, Soot, Tink, Tortuga, and Wu-Ting. They’re a family.”
I backed away from the van and ran to the house, “Jim! I need you!”
Jim walked out of the house and into the driveway where Sue, a kind-hearted lady, stood in front of her 1980s model van filled with five cat carriers, and five scared hissing feral cats peered at us.
Sue looked at Jim and said, “thank you so much for opening your home to these cats. I found them I a parking lot last winter. They’ve been fixed, but no one wants them since they’re not kittens.”
Jim quizzically looked at the caged animals and asked, “so which two are we taking?”
“All of them.” Sue repeated as she swept her hand in the air like a hostess on ‘The Price is Right’. Jim shook his head and said, “so you just want to let them out now?”
“Oh no. We’ll set them up in the barn, and I’ll feed them each day for two weeks so that they know where home is. Then, we’ll release them so they won’t run away. They’ll be frightened. And I brought 50 pounds of cat food.”
Jim said, “ok, we’ll see.” Sue drove to the barn to set-up these hissing cats in the tack room as I stood outside the barn in shock. We agree to take two…and we were looking at five.
Each day, for two weeks, Sue stopped by and fed the hissing, growling felines. They hated me. On the 14th day, Jim and Sue opened the cages, and the cats ran into the woods. At night, I saw 5 pairs of eyes in the woods, watching me. Then I only saw 4…and three…until finally, a year later, Soot and Tink are the only remaining feral cats who will stay in the barn, catch mice and wait for feeding time.
Wu-Ting tried to drive a firetruck and Tortuga lost a fight with a coyote. Mama-cat appears once a month, but after a year, we have two barn cats. And Mia isn’t happy.
Raised By A Village 