This morning as I was rushing to get to work, I stopped across the street to feed my outdoor feral cats in the apartments. It was rainning slightly, but there were two cats playing and frolicking together on the grass next to the dumpster. I recognized "Flat-Ear" right away, since he is always there to meet me whenever he hears my car. He is a very old cat for a feral, a grizzled old yellow tomcat who proudly maintains his independence and has never gone into my trap to be neutered. I have fed him for almost three years, and while he hangs out over there with some of the other cats, I have never seen him frolicking like this before.

Well, now for the punchline. His new paramour is Edna! Edna was a TCC cat, a female who once lived in the drainage ditch at the back of campus. I caught her last Spring and she was spayed, inoculated, and microchipped. She came home to live in my house, but during the almost six months she was inside, Edna never really adjusted to my feline household. So, reluctantly in the fall as winter was setting in, I released her in my back yard. She came for a long while to my feral feeder out there, but after about a month, I noticed that she was no longer coming to eat. I did, however, see her every so often across the street in the field near the apartments or once alongside the apartment houses. But I had never seen Edna with any other cat until today, and I wondered if there was anyone Edna could ever bond with.

Well, it made my heart glad that I had done the right thing for Edna, since both she and Flat-Ear came up together and ate breakfast as I drove off. That's a true measure of success in relocating a feral cat, something that is often not recommended. But if they find love among their own kind, that is about all anyone can ask for!

-Janet Thompson

Memorials

Kerry

Dallas

Rockanoche

EULOGY FOR ROCKANOCHE
by Janet A. Thompson
THANKSGIVING, 2005

Yesterday, I held our cat, Rocky, in my arms as he was calmly and peacefully euthanized. He was not ill long and probably died of renal failure. I had cared for him for the better part of two years, although he once was adopted by someone else who left the area and before leaving returned him to FOG. Looking back on it now, that is the best thing that could have happened to both Rocky and to me. We both learned from each other what the human and animal bond should be in all cases, but most often fall short of because of human inadequacy, impatience, selfishness, public postering, and devaluation of non-human species.

To go back to the beginning in January, 2004, I remember the day that Rockanoche and his new Bainbridge Shelter companion Sunny were delivered to my home by a representative of the Bainbridge Humane Society. They looked very ill, so ill in fact that the woman who brought them wanted to take them back and have them euthanized. They were also very feral having been caught in the streets of Bainbridge. I told her then, "No, they are staying," and I put them on my back porch away from all of the other cats.

Thus began a new chapter of my life in feral cat rescue and an life-transforming experience in the world of vet- and animal society-induced fear over feline diseases. As it would turn out in the following few days, when Rocky and Sunny were sent to our vets, they both tested positive for FeLV (feline leukemia virus). The manager of the clinic where we take our animals did not even want them to stay around there, and she was adamant that they ought to be euthanized. She said, "Janet, these cats have at least two strikes against them: they are sick with leukemia and THEY ARE FERAL. No one will want to adopt them."

By now, I was growing attached to my two sick boys and not about to let anyone put them down. So, having had all of their shots and having been neutered, Rocky and Sunny came home to live on my porch in big dog-sized crates. That is how they spent the first three months of their life with me and it was during this time that gradually with good food, vitamins, and other holistic techniques, the boys became healthy and slowly tamed. Sunny was tame first; he was a much younger cat than Rocky who must have been 6 or 7 years old at his capture in Bainbridge. And he had been feral his whole life. But when he watched me pet Sunny, he would be jealous and come right up to the front of the crate and stick his nose there. I would rub his nose a little and he got used to it. If I opened his crate to feed him he would jump back, but sometimes he would put his paw against my hand to try me out. I must have seemed a nicer human than he had experienced before because I kept coming back twice a day with food for him. Rocky loved salmon, and I often gave him some of my own. At the Bainbridge Shelter, one of the workers had given him salmon as his "last meal"� just before he was to be euthanized. Before they could kill him, though, I had agreed to take him in, so the salmon kept coming and Rocky kept living.

A few months later, Rocky and Sunny were adopted by a woman who had previously owned a leukemic cat. They were able to "get out of jail" and out of their crates and live normally in a room in a house. When they were with her, they made rapid progress and soon ceased to show any feral attributes. They loved their new lives and the attention they got from people. This continued for about five months before the woman got a job in another state and brought Rocky and Sunny back to me. This time they went back to my porch where they were not in crates anymore and free to enjoy the sun, air, birds, and each other. When the hurricane season started, they were put inside in a separate room away from the other FOG cats. After the 2004 hurricane season, FOG took in several more cats. As fate would have it, several more cats tested positive for the FeLV virus. So, Rocky and Sunny began to have companions out on that porch. We killed none of them, where most of the other animal organizations in Tallahassee (even that big one that lies about being a "no kill") would have immediately euthanized them.

While all of this took an enormous amount of work and money for their vet expenses, every one of them has been a real blessing in his or her own way. Some of them have since died (watch for other CAT MEMORIALS). A cat with the FeLV virus is an uncertain proposition. How long a lifespan the cat will have often cannot even be predicted, but then nothing in life is certain or guaranteed, even for humans. Caring for animals in modern day America is seldom about the altruism in helping an animal have the life God gave it, even though there is untold joy and love in helping these creatures our society has turned its back on.

So, after returning to my home, Rocky and Sunny became so tame and so bonded with me that they were toted around the porch and back to their room inside the house just like one would carry a baby. They had made a full transition from feral to human love in their advanced adulthood, something that most in the veterinary profession have told the public is impossible for the last half century. I am now in my 34th year of taming feral cats; I have tamed dozens of them, very many in their adulthood. But Rocky and Sunny were special because they taught me to conquer my fear of cat diseases and clarified the meaning of our being a "no kill"� organization. Jesus walked with lepers; most people cannot even walk with a leukemic cat. As a 30-year college educator, what I strive for in my classes is to teach my students to "think outside the box." Rocky was no ordinary cat and he taught me and members of Friends of Gypsy to do just that.