Code name: Coyote
So, we’ve got a house guest staying in the baby’s room. (James sleeps in his Pack & Play bassinet in the master bedroom and sometimes sneaks into the big bed.)
This little tortoiseshell cat first showed up last Monday after the school board meeting, hungry and desperate for affection, trying to dart into the house when Jenn opened the door to the Domino’s Pizza guy. Our best guess is the cat is about two months old. We figured she’d gotten lost after being let out of a neighbors’ house. Jenn fed and watered her, and the kitten left around midnight.
Saturday night, she showed up at our back door, this time with a cut over one eye, filthy and dirty and missing a patch of hair where someone had decided to claw her. She was starving and trying to get in through the back door or the master bedroom window. Clearly, she hadn’t been home since we last saw her, and given how she wolfed down a can of cat food, and then tucked into dry food and then gulped a whole bunch of water, hadn’t been sleeping, eating or drinking well, either.
Given that there’s a big stray tomcat in the neighborhood who looks like he’s won more than a few fights in the neighborhood — not to mention actual coyotes in the area — we brought her in the house. Not wanting to expose Hanna and Lucky (not to mention James) to fleas, ticks or worse, we put her in the nursery, along with her own litter box and food and water. (The tomcat stopped by our back porch about 90 minutes later.)
Today, after I attend the opening of Canyon Ridge High School, we’re going to take the cat (code-named Coyote) to Hesperia Animal Hospital, get her cut cleaned up, get her the basic shots and have her checked out, flea-dipped, et cetera. Then we’ll look in the Daily Press and on local utility poles for ads looking for a missing tortoiseshell cat. If that doesn’t work out, we get to figure out whether we want to try to integrate her into a house with a pair of two year old cats and a baby or place her with the animal foster system that we originally got Hanna and Lucky from.
Jenn’s trying hard not to get too attached to Coyote, although she was the one who figured out (or guessed) that the cat showed up on our doorstep on Saturday, two years to the day Motley Sue passed away, which is certainly a weird sort of coincidence.
The cat’s very sweet, and I’ve already brought Lucky in to check her out briefly, which went off without incident, but it’s too soon to know what we’re going to do here.
In any case, she’s a cute, sweet kitten. If you know who she belongs to, let me know.
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I just happened to be searching online to see how common my pet’s names are . . . and when googling my cat (female) Coyote, I got your page as a result. The irony of it all is that she’s also a Tortioseshell. Fortunately, she’s never been in a situation like this youngster.
-Leigh
Comment by Leigh — April 13, 2008 @ 0:44