If your car is like mine, it needs a wash! Next week I’ll fill you in on a car wash fundraiser to benefit Whiskers. It’ll be easy to make your purchase online, so the next time you have to drive your cats somewhere they won’t be embarrassed to be seen in a dirty car! Or, if you are very good about getting your car washed on a regular basis, then you can maintain your routine and help out some local cats while you’re at it.

More info next week!

Look at this cute guy, Ori! His mom and dad (and cat siblings) live in Albany, and are customers of my cat sitting business. Ori’s mom gets an e-mail newsletter from “The Paw Print,” and she saw a call for cat photos for a fund-raising calendar. She submitted Ori’s photo, and here he is!

I asked Ori’s mom if his name had a specific meaning. She said it means, “my light,” in Hebrew. Ori came into her life after her dog, Harper, passed away. She said that it also happens to be the name of a character from “Lord of The Rings.” Ori also lives with two other cats, Gram and Bodhi — all characters!

Last week we left off with a summary of the cats I caught after the Compost Pile Kittens were taken in. I mentioned how the kittens were pretty easily socialized and found a great home quite quickly. Their foster names were Gryphon and Roc, two birds of mythology from our naming theme for the current bunch of cats … we’re still working our way through cats from the same location a year and half later. The kittens are now called Franklin and Turing, after the well-known scientists. Quite fitting!

I also mentioned how various cats went to their different foster homes, but that two situations kind of went sideways, Cetan and Bennu. This week I’d like to tell you about Cetan.

Cetan was the most feral of the cats I caught in January 2025. My original plan was to have him neutered, and ear tipped, and put him back outside, as much as I hated to do that. The person who owns the property where I caught the kittens and the other cats I have written about so far, agreed to let me set up a more permanent feeding and shelter area for the cats on another property he owned, sort of around the corner and across the street from where I caught this first batch of cats. I figured Cetan was a survivor and a roamer, so he would find the food.

(An ear tip, if you do not know, is when the point of a cat’s left ear is literally cut off, while the cat is under sedation for spay and neuter. An accepted practice in Trap-Neuter-Return situations, this makes is easy to know if a cat you catch has already been spayed or neutered. If the cat has an ear tip, you can confidently let it out of the trap and not go through the whole ordeal of taking it in, and to the vet, just to find out it has already had surgery. The first time I caught a cat that someone else had ear-tipped, I suddenly became very appreciative of the procedure. I still hate it, but it is extremely helpful to cat trappers. On the east coast of the US, usually the left ear is tipped. Other regions of the US have other standards.)

I drove the cats to Kingston, NY, to meet up with Upstate Spay & Neuter van. At that time, it was the most cost-effective surgery I could find, without having to ear tip all of the cats. In some cases, lower-cost surgery requires ear-tipping. I guess this keeps pet owners from taking advantage of the lower-cost not-owned cat surgery prices. The van lets you choose.

When I went to pick up the cats, the veterinarian told me that Cetan’s teeth were a mess and he really needed dental care. His paperwork described his mouth as “purulent.” Not good. The vet pulled 5 of his teeth while he was under anesthesia. (And didn’t charge me any extra for that!) He also was not ear-tipped, so in the end, that was a good thing. It can be harder to adopt a cat out when there is something “wrong” or different about its ears, or maybe I just get tired of answering questions about that from potential adopters!

Next, I asked Whiskers if they could take Cetan on as a Whiskers cat, with me and my husband  fostering him. Whiskers agreed, and we were able to make an appointment at a veterinary office for his dental work. Just like any other customer, we had to wait over a month for the appointment.

In the meantime, what do we do with Cetan? He was not the least bit interested in people; as a matter of fact, he found us threatening. We knew he probably felt lousy from his dental problems, and we knew that we didn’t know what on earth we would do with him long term. We already have two semi-feral cats living in our house (going on eight years, we do consider them our cats, they’re not up for adoption), and we definitely do not want more feral “pets!”

One step at a time. We set up the usual cage on a table in the living, as I described in last week’s newsletter. Cetan had a cat carrier in the cage, and any time we were around, he was in there. He would lunge, growl, hiss, and snap at us when we fed him. Not too promising.

Unsure if he was even connecting with the resident cats, through his cage bars, I set up a web camera to look in his cage. I was happy to discover that basically, as soon as we left the house, he came out of the cat carrier, ate, drank, even played with toys, would relax in the sun when it came by the living room windows. If I watched the camera on my phone, I could see that the second he could hear us coming in, he retreated to the cat carrier.

We don’t normally keep a cat caged for more than 14 days, but I just didn’t know if we could capture him if he was loose in a room, to get to his dental surgery. The best thing to do was keep him caged. In retrospect, this worked. He needed time to come to terms with being indoors. Once he started to come out of the cat carrier, still in the cage, while I was sitting right across from him, on the couch, I could see him looking up at the ceiling. It was as if he was trying to figure out what happened to the sky.

Over time, we were able to raise the sheets covering the cage, and he would come out of his cat carrier while we were in the room or sitting on the couch nearby. Big progress! He still wasn’t too sure about us sticking our hands into the cage, even if we were delivering food and water or scooping his litter box. He did start to talk to the other cats! They mostly ignored him, but he was trying very hard to get their attention, maybe in hopes of assistance with a jail break!

Finally, the day came, and I was able to close the cat carrier door while he was inside of it, in the cage, and get him to the vet. We decided to keep him caged another week after he got back, to make sure that he was eating and his mouth was starting to heal and he didn’t have to go back to the vet with any kind of emergency.

But, now what? One thing we concluded from the experiences we’ve had with our two semi-feral cats is that we let them loose in the house way too soon. They do like to get petted, on their own terms and in locations of the house that they deem, “safe,” at “safe” times of the day. They both still run away from us and small noises. They don’t sit near us — one just started to curl up next to me at bedtime about a year ago, but she leaves at the slightest perceived threat. We cannot pick them up.

We knew that we would need the cat room/work-from-home office for more fosters. So, we decided to put Cetan into the “overflow” cat room. This room is on the main floor of the house, directly across from the bedroom, and next to the bathroom, and not very far from the living room and dining room, so a cat in the overflow room can hear people and cats living life, and see them coming and going. That is, if there is some kind of door or gate that the cat can see through, but not escape from.

Next week I’ll tell you what we did for the door and outline the long, slow, progress of a cat that I now couldn’t put back outside — he did have some teeth left, but at this point he had been inside for a few months, and being half-toothless seemed like a big disadvantage for outdoor life, so we decide to try to socialize him. The only plan was to keep trying different things, and go at his pace!

I wasn’t sure how the “pay what you feel” subscription tier would go over, so it was amazing to see six readers pay for content! Don’t worry, the e-mail subscription to this newsletter is free for everyone, but one income stream that has worked for other newsletters is to offer an open-ended “pay if you feel like this is worth it,” model.

I officially want to thank Sundance and her people for being the first to sign up!

Thank you for your words of support, everyone. It means lot to me. I’m like most people, just wondering daily what the heck I am doing with my time on this planet! Thank you! — Lori