The 5th of November, 2010, was a pretty cold night in the city of Buffalo. It had been snowing, but, like many people in our working class neighborhood, the house we lived in came with a local semi-feral cat, so when we heard him howling on the porch, we did the same thing we've done for years, we brought him in, let him crash for the night, and made sure he was okay. Since that semi-feral (named Ulysses) appeared, years before, we'd gotten him fixed, gotten his shots, and taken responsibility for him, but this time, when he appeared, a shivering, and very clearly either pregnant or recently pregnant gray cat sauntered in right behind him, and proceeded to lay, panting, at the door.
It became apparent, over the next several months, that this gray cat-who we’d name Fawkes-was not a local feral cat. She’d had some of her shots, she’d sometimes have a flea collar, and she was clearly fed well enough to be doing alright. We’d go months without seeing her, until the day she came up to our house, camped out under the sofa, and dropped a load of kittens.
We got those kittens homes, in part, because our two local shelters had little or no room, especially for kittens that tended towards the wild side. Fawkes disappeared again, and then, months later, my partner, walking down the street found Fawkes on someone else’s porch…a family with a much harder story even than ours. Fawkes, you see, is a foreclosure cat.
Her owners meant well when they got her, the cat is loved, incredibly sweet (and a little stupid) and her ‘real name,’ is, in fact, Princess (which is what I would name the kitten that Fawkes gave me under the sofa on that night.) They had jobs, they had futures, and then they had nothing, but they did have a cat who was smart enough to hunt her own food if left outside. I’ve had two indoor cats in three years die from being hit by cars on my street after getting out briefly. Outside is not safe, but Fawkes is trying to survive.
But her owners cannot feed her. They cannot keep her. They went from having jobs to getting their food from a food pantry. Right now, I don’t know where they are, their house is empty and- the last I knew, the wife of the couple was wondering if they were going to live in their car, and, of all things, she was crying…not about losing her house, or her stuff, but because they didn’t want this stupid (and Fawkes is a bit stupid) cat to die.
A couple months ago, in 2011, in one of the warmest winters we’ve ever had, Fawkes came home to us with significant frostbite and wounds indicative of either trying to climb into a chimney, dryer vent or car engine to stay warm. She’s not currently pregnant, and my own training as a biologist plus stockpiles of meds for my own few cats has nursed her to health. (Everyone knows, my house is the house with the cat medicine cabinet, after all!)
But she needs to be fixed. She needs basic veterinary care, she needs food and water that I can’t afford, even though we’ve got love for her.
I set this campaign at $300. I can probably cry my vet down to $40, but I want the repairing burns on her legs looked at, and I want her healthy, fixed, and better, so that if that family every makes it back, she’s alive, and healthy and maybe still stupid. If you can give a dollar or two, and save this foreclosed cat, please give. If you can’t, thanks for trying.
I also want to thank all the lovely Buffalo and Western New York Shelters who have offered to help. There is room in my inn, I don’t have unneutered males, so I can keep her in, and she will wait, patiently, for her family to come back.
Anything above the amount needed that I raise is hopefully going to go to trap the large, male, fully feral cat in my neighborhood that keeps us all free of rats, but, unfortunately, in orange and calico kittens.
a while ago