Journey to my forever home

'Q'

(10/2020) It seems so, so long ago. I remember the first time I wandered away from ‘home.’ It wasn’t so much of a home, as I know it today. It was a spot in some high grass where Mom had placed us.

I was one of five. Alex, the adventurous one, had wandered down the path Mom used. He had been away for a while and I went looking for him. I followed the path for what seemed like forever. In reality, I didn’t go very far as I was constantly stopping to look back since it was my first time away from home. Everything was new. It was exciting, yet at the same time, it was scary.

After inspecting what I would later learn was a cricket for almost half an hour, I was about to start off again in search of Alex when I heard something crashing through the grass at me. I hunkered down, like Mom had taught us, and hoped whatever it was would not see me. When I did look up, all I could see were Mom’s two eyes – and they did not have a happy expression on them.

Mom picked me up by the neck and I soon found myself next to Alex and everyone else back at home. So much for my first big adventure.

Life was pretty good back then. Mom always made sure we had something to eat. I still remember the first time she brought us our first mouse. We were so clumsy that it kept getting away. Eventually, we figured out how to grab it with our claws but had no idea what to do next, so we let it get away. Mom was furious!

When she wasn’t around, we practiced our hunting skills on whatever wandered near our nest. I spit out my first grasshopper – it tasted horrible! I couldn’t wait to grow up and hunt like Mom.

One day Alex left the nest again, but having learned my lesson, I didn’t follow him – I knew he would get in trouble when Mom brought him back home. But Mom came home without him; she turned around and left immediately. That evening, when she returned, Alex was still gone.

I never did see him again.

A few days later, Mom didn’t return home that evening, nor did she come home in the morning. By the second night, we were all getting hungry and one by one, slowly crept away from the nest to look for Mom.

As I was the oldest, I went first. I soon passed where Mom had found me on the path a week or so back, and though I was scared, I kept going on. It was bright and sunny out. After a while the path came to the stream Mom had taken us to several times to drink. I could smell her scent, but she was nowhere to be seen.

I jumped from rock to rock and was soon on the other side of the stream and continued on. Eventually, I came to a wide opening. The ground was hard and black, and there were big things swooshing by me. They were moving so fast that I couldn’t turn my head fast enough to follow them. I turned around. As I would learn later, it was one of the smartest things I did.

I wandered alongside the back dirt for while and then went back into the grass. I was just about to lay down for a nap, when a big older cat jumped in front of me. "I was on his territory," he told me and, "I had better keep moving."

I turned to head back the way I came, but he blocked my way, so I turned around and kept going in the direction I had been heading.

It seemed every time I stopped, I was told to keep moving. I had no idea where I was, or where home was anymore. I was on my own.

I was still little, so ‘mousing’ was still beyond my capabilities. I lived on grasshoppers, crickets, and anything else that passed my way. My stomach always felt empty.

Mom had found us a nice shelter, so no matter how hard it rained, we were always dry. However, I had no place to call home now, so when it rained, I always got wet. And as time went on, you can add cold to the list of miseries that afflicted me.

One day, I found a bowl of food and ate it with gusto. I came back the next day and it was full again! This time, after eating it, I waited around to see how it magically refilled. Boy, was I surprised when I saw a woman fill it. She had no sooner filled it then I rushed to eat it before anyone else could. While I was eating, she reached down and stroked my back. It was the first time since Mom that I had felt anyone touch my back. I wanted to run, but I was too busy eating. Not to mention it felt good!

As weeks turned to months, I became comfortable being around the woman; I even let her pick me up when she wanted to. I was getting pretty used to being around her house, and even had a place to sleep out of the rain, so I began to call it home. But one day, just like Mom, she failed to show up. The food bowl remained empty.

I stayed around for a week, hoping against hope. But as the hunger in my stomach grew, I eventually moved on. Again, I found myself running into other cat’s territories. Some would simply warn me to move on, others, well let’s just say, they were spoiling for a fight. I lost more than I won, so by the time I showed up here, I was pretty banged up.

I can still remember my first night here. There were a bunch of cats behind a wire, all hanging out in the cool of the night. One called out to me as I was passing. We started up a conversation: him asking me what it was like to be feral and me asking him what it was like to have a home.

I guess we were pretty loud, because before I knew it, I heard a door open and a man walked towards me. While I was alright with the woman who had fed me, I had learned enough over the years to hide away until I knew if I could trust someone. I moved into the tall grass and watched him. Much to my surprise, he put down a bowl of food! I ate like I hadn’t eaten in a long time.

I thanked the guys behind the wire and went on my way. My territory was rather large, and I still had a fair amount of it to patrol before I could rest, but at least tonight, I would rest with a full stomach.

The next night, I stopped by the farm again, and sure enough, there was a bowl of food just where I had left it the night before. Again, I scarfed it down, all the while chatting with the other cats behind the wire.

Soon I had a new routine. They even built me a little hut so I could eat inside during the rain. It was far from perfect, but for a feral, it would do.

With my second winter approaching, I got sick. I don’t know what I got, but I was pretty sick. I was too tired to groom myself and always seemed to be coughing. Thankfully, I was able to find an old barn to sleep in and tried to wait out the sickness. But I keep getting sicker and sicker.

Then it happened again: I went to eat, and the food bowl was empty. When I came back in the morning, the bowl was in a small cage. I didn’t care; I was tired and hungry, so I walked in. No sooner had I walked in when the door slammed shut. I was trapped.

I wanted to cry out, to fight, but the nice man was soon by the cage and he covered it with a blanket. Before I knew it, I could feel the cage moving. The next thing I knew, I was inside. It was warm and a lot of people were looking at me.

I remember someone grabbing the back of my neck, and felt a bee sting, and then I was running after a mouse in a wide-open field in bright sunshine. I must have been dreaming, but then again, I wondered if I was dreaming when I woke up laying on a warm bed to the sound of rain outside of a window.

In a blink of an eye, I had gone from a feral cat to an inside cat. Well, not really an inside cat, but a barn cat. But I’m not just any barn cat, but a barn cat with my own room to sleep in, with my own bed (heated in the winter no less!), a food and water bowl that are always filled, and a nice friend – Will – who, like me, got lucky enough to be able to call this farm home.

It’s now going on three years since that nice man came out to feed me. My life before then is quickly becoming a distant memory. That nice man is now my guy. I hear people say I’m more like a dog than a cat, because I follow him everywhere, but what do I care? I like him and he likes me. Every night he comes out to sit with me. Sometimes, he brings his computer, like he did tonight, to capture my story before either of us is too old to remember it. Someday, when we are both old, and I truly am an indoor cat, we’ll sit in front of the fireplace and he will read this story to me, and memories of good times will come roaring back.

Until then, I’m just going to enjoy this life. I’m sure Mom, wherever she is, would be happy to know I was one of the lucky ones. I made it. I finally have a place I can call home again. And this one is a forever home.