Harley was born to a feral mother who I had been feeding outside my apartment. She had disappeared during the birth, and about six weeks later, she proudly marched up to my door with three kittens in tow. This was May, 2006.
I could not catch them at first; being feral, they would just hiss and run away. After a couple of days, I did catch two of them, but the little black one ran like the wind under a storage building out back. I surrendered the two I caught to my veterinarian, who gave them their medications and put them up for adoption in his office. They found good homes.
The little black kitten remained with his mother, and even though they would stay on my porch and come to me to be fed, they were still evasive. One day, I noticed that the kitten was by himself. The mother had evidently moved on, and I never saw her again. He lived under my car in the driveway, and I lived in fear of him getting run over.
I was diligent in trying to get him close enough to nab him to bring him inside. I set up a little device using a mesh laundry hamper, and put the cat food inside it. After several days, he was accustomed to it enough to go inside to eat. I managed to sneak around from the back and grab him. He let out a wail that I'm sure the neighbors heard! I ducked inside with him, and gave him a bath and cleaned his eyes. He was not amused, and terrified.
He was placed on a towel in the bathroom, and I brought in a small litter tray and a food dish. I kept him separated from my other two cats for the first couple of days, and he eventually began to respond to my petting. I named him Harley, because he had such a distinctive purr. He's still quite the talker.
Harley's favorite game is to fetch the cotton glove fingertips that I cut off my white gloves I use for crafts. Who would have guessed ten free kitty toys for each pair? His fetch record is forty-nine times in a row, where I toss the finger off the bed, and he comes back with it, dropping it by my hand. I was tired by that time, so who knows how many times he might have gone for it?
Harley is not a lap cat at all, but he is a love, none the less. He sleeps at the foot of my bed, after a nightly round of fetch. He does not jump up onto high places, and he still goes the long way around to get on my bed, having been so small when he first came inside that I trained him to use a little step ladder to get onto my bed. Instead of a ladder now, he jumps first onto a side table, then up onto the bed. He's the one cat I do not have to worry about getting on the counter.
One of his funniest habits is "burning out" before he takes a drink of water from the dish. One of my other cats always puts a paw in the dish to test the level of the water first, and I suppose that move has been reinterpreted by Harley to mean a quick pawing at the floor in front of the dish before he drinks.
I'm still amazed at how this big black cat who loves the foot of my bed was that scared little thing I rescued from the street.
This photo was taken in indirect sun coming in through the curtain on the window at the left of the picture. I love it because Harley is a real dust magnet, and you can see the fuzz on him in great detail. It also shows the parts of him that are not true black, which you can't see except in bright natural light.
Thank you, ASPCA, for everything you do.
1 comment:
A Mona Lisa pose?
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