Today I found Shankar, one of our feral cats, dead in the snow. I'd been worried about him because of the bad weather and because he was limping a couple of days ago and didn't seem to be feeling well. I don't know that there was anything more that we could have done for him, since he was avowedly feral till the end and only in recent months had permitted a small pat or back scratch while he was eating. To my knowledge, he never used the feral cat shelters we had put out.As far as I know, he's the last of the group we had neutered and spayed in October 2007. The others are presumed to have died, but because we didn't actually see a body, we didn't really have a chance to mourn them. So with the death of Shankar, the last member of our little feral family, I feel the need to reflect on our experience caring for these beautiful creatures.In summer 2007, we noticed that one of the neighborhood feral cats with a litter of kittens had taken up residence on our back doorstep. We'd seen two skinny dilute tortoiseshell cats around, completely wild, that were the offspring from the summer before of one of our neighbor Jo's semi-wild cats, and now one of them had given birth. Jo, an elderly woman living alone, had moved out earlier that year, as I recall.Since these cats were using our yard, I felt somewhat responsible. We couldn't take the kittens in and try to tame them, as we had two elderly cats of our own. Fortunately, we have a great organization called Indy Feral. They do TNR, or trap-neuter-release. For a donation of $20 per cat, they will send out a volunteer to trap the cats, spay and neuter them, and release them back. This also involves agreeing to care for the colony and suggestions on how to do this.We scheduled their surgery for October and started putting out food for them. The two adult females, the mother and he sister, we at first referred to as "Mother" and "Aunt" in relation to the kittens. This later became "Maddie" and "Addie." They were so wild they would run away if you looked at them, and not approach the food bowl unless the door was closed with no human outside. The kittens were naturally a bit more curious. I believe the original litter had six kittens, but some of them must not have survived. The remaining three we called "Peaches," "Shasta," and "Shankar." Peaches, a little orange cat, was the most curious of the three. He would poke his nose in the door. Shasta and Shankar looked so much alike that at first I called them "Shasta 1" and "Shasta 2," but Stephan came up with "Shankar" for the second cat. These were beautiful cats. Maddie was an alley cat through and through, but their father must have been something with a pedigree. They were white with blue eyes and grey points, looking pretty close to purebred Birman.
Maddie (front) with WilliamWe got all five of these cats trapped and released back that October, plus one big grey tom cat we'd never seen before and may have been somebody's pet. Well, he came back a little different from before. We didn't see him again.At some point Peaches disappeared and was presumed dead. Shasta took up the mantle of the curious one, permitting an occasional pat, while his brother Shankar looked on in horror and hissed at us. "No! We're wild cats! Don't let them touch you!"
ShastaBy summer of 2009, Shasta had become almost a pet. I could actually pick him up and cuddle him and he would purr. Still wary, his first impulse was to move away if a human came toward him, but he could be coaxed. When either of us opened the door to feed the cats, he would rub against our legs while Shankar hissed and swiped a paw through the air. Shasta would sometimes poke his head in the door and touch noses with our elderly cat, Athena, or once we got the kittens, with Narvi.Maddie, Addie, Shasta and Shankar made such a nice little family group. They all loved to rub against each other and seemed very close. I'm not sure I remember the chronology correctly, but at some point Addie got sick and then just stopped showing up. She was the wildest of the group, and usually fled if you so much as looked at her. I really wanted to trap her and take her to the vet, but didn't have any success. I think Shasta was next. We left for an early January vacation in 2010 and never saw him again. Our catsitter who put out food hadn't seen him either. That was difficult, since we didn't know what happened to him and he'd been such a sweetie. Once we'd given him antibiotics in wet food to treat a bite to his leg from some animal, and another time I took him inside to treat a bite wound. He freaked out when he was in the house, but I managed to get some peroxide on him. The summer of 2009, he hung out with us in the yard quite a bit.Maddie disappeared and returned several times. We joked that she must have gone a couple blocks south for the winter. Maybe she had found an abandoned house to hole up in. But at some point she stopped coming too. I believe she had been sick before that, and like her sister, was too wild to catch, though I did manage to pat her once when she was distracted by eating. She gave me the most horrified expression I've ever seen on a cat.
ShankarIn some ways, Shankar was my least favorite of the family, so it was somewhat ironic that he outlived the others. He was a constant grouch, hissing even as I filled a bowl of food for him, swiping at my hand if I reached toward him. I suspect a lot of it was bluff and bluster. But in the last few months, he was mellowed in part, I think, by his friendship with two other cats. A feral black cat we called "Mack" showed up for a while. He and Shankar would rub against each other and seemed to be buddies. But then "William," an orange cat who we've seen off and on, showed up and Mack disappeared. I didn't like William, because he seemed like a bully. The year before, Shasta had been afraid of him and I wondered if he was the inflictor of some of Shasta's wounds. But somehow Shankar and William ended up becoming friends, and for the past month or two, it's been the two of them waiting at the door for their morning bowl of food. William would purr and Shankar would let me scratch his back. A couple days or so ago I gave them both a pat.Cold weather is hard on animals. I wish we could have given them better shelter. William has been seen using the cat shelter we put out, but I don't think Shankar ever did. I worried about Shankar two days ago when he showed up limping and let William eat most of the food. He lay under a bush most of the day Sunday. I approached him once to see how he was, but he got up and walked away. Today, he lay stiff in the snow, a tuft of white surrounded by white. I'll miss having his cantankerous, scowling face at the door in the mornings. I'm glad I got the chance to know the little feral family and hope that by feeding them and interacting with them, I made their life a little bit better. I don't know if William will stick around. He comes and goes. But I'll keep putting food out.My indoor pets, Freya and Narvi, have no idea how lucky they are.