I can't place the date exactly but around June of 2007, a little multi-colored kitten began showing up in my backyard, partaking of the free food that I put out there for other feral cats. I posted an item about her and this photo in September of that year. She's the one on the left…
We called her The Kitten and she turned up almost every night. At the time, I'm fairly sure her main hangout was across the street from me. It's a fairly busy street so she was risking her pretty little life every time she came over here for chow and then returned over there. At some point though, she seems to have relocated her base of operations to my yard.
In April of 2008, she was still dining here…but perhaps dining for at least two. She was either putting on serious weight or she was pregnant, mostly likely the latter. I called a friend who was involved with charities that care deeply about feral cats and asked what, if anything, I should do. He told me I should capture her, take her to a vet to get her "fixed" and to terminate the pregnancy. Each year, hundreds of thousands of feral cats in this country either starve to death or are "put to sleep." It is better, he said, not to let them be born than to make the problem worse.
I thought about it and decided he was correct. The catching of The Kitten was a long, difficult process which I reported on in diary form on this blog. The diary ends with me succeeding and I have collected those listings over at this page if you want to read them. Below is a photo from that mission…
During the adventure, The Kitten got an actual name. I named her Lydia. When I brought her back from the vet, she seemed so angry in that cage/carrier that I thought she'd never come near me again. But when I turned her loose in my yard, it took about two minutes before she was on my porch asking for food.
That was April of 2008. Since then, I have posted many items and photos of little Lydia. There have been times when for some reason unknown to me, I didn't see her for a long stretch of time and I feared she was gone, probably in the mortal sense. I've had a lot of feral cats out there and sometimes, we find them dead but more often, they just stop coming around.
At one point, I was up to four regulars and an occasional guest for dinner. Then it was three. Then it was two. One of those two, Sylvia, died last August, leaving Lydia alone out there.
I haven't mentioned Lydia lately here and I recently received three messages from folks who feared the worst and wanted to know if there's any chance she's still dining on my porch. After all, feral cats aren't supposed to live long. You can find all sorts of different stats online but most would say that an outdoor stray will survive 2-9 years.
Well, here's a photo I took of Lydia Tuesday afternoon…
She doesn't look all that different from the way she looked when I first saw her wolfing down Friskies on that step back in mid-2007. Assuming she was born around the beginning of that year, that would make her a little over twelve years old now — and yes, I know it's rude to discuss a lady's age but she won't know. She almost never reads this blog.
The main change I notice in her over those years is that she's less active and especially less likely to climb up to high places. She used to chase squirrels and butterflies and sometimes even feral cats she didn't know who found their way to the buffet I provide. Now, she doesn't bother. She also used to like to sit on the roof of my garage, peering over the edge like a gargoyle. I haven't seen her up there in years.
She's out in the yard there 24/7 except when the gardener or the pool guy comes by. When one does, she relocates into an adjoining neighbor's property until they leave her turf and she can come back and resume licking herself. It's a pretty good life and I don't know how much longer it will last. I just know it always makes me smile to see her out there. When I get up in the morning and go to my bathroom, I look out the window and usually see Lydia outside, napping or cleaning some part of herself. It's a reassuring way to start my day.