Well, here's something I can blog about: cat drama.

I've previously mentioned that my neighborhood has feral cats, who I (as well as several other people) feed. Among the population is a pet cat who has seemingly been abandoned and decided that our house is his house now. My housemate and I have been stewing about it for a good chunk of the year and have come to the conclusion that we have to snatch him.

Many factors have gone into this decision, which we have not come to lightly! To be brief: he refuses to leave our yard, he refuses to cohabitate with the local ferals peacefully, he is not being taken care of. We were hoping that after a TNR he would stop picking fights with the other cats but no dice; he's doing it less, but still doing it. He needs to be somewhere else, and if he won't relocate himself then we will have to do it for him.

Currently the plan is to snatch him and keep him in the basement for as long as we need to to figure out what his personality is when he's inside. If he can't be an indoor pet cat, then we'll look into finding someone in need of a barncat - but if it's possible for him to live indoors, that's obviously the best option, so we want to give him a fair shot at that.

The basement is not a nice basement - if it were a nice basement, we'd be using it for all kinds of stuff. It's a typical yucky unfinished basement with a layer of dirt over the porous concrete floor, it's absolutely full of spiders, and it's got what we're pretty sure is asbestos dangling from some pipes. It is not appropriate for a creature or person to live in long-term; we don't even like using it for storage even with a dehumidifer running 24/7. But it's what we've got.

Since we decided to do this, I've been sprucing up the basement. I've acquired eight area rugs to cover (some of) the nasty floor, a comfy loveseat, a cat tree, and a scratching board for free, and an air purifier for cheap. We have an old litterbox and some spare toys and catnip, and I know he's happy to eat (a lot of) the food I feed the outdoor cats so that's all set. I'm going to rummage around for a box so he can have a low-down hiding spot as well as the high-up options in the cat tree. I have a couple of spare blankets that he can have as well.

Here's an overview of the cat as I know him so far:

It's very hard to tell what he's like. My optimistic interpretation is that he's unhappy and stressed being abandoned outside, and wants to be near people but is too stressed to do it properly, in which case he'll probably settle down once he's inside and gets used to us. My less-optimistic interpretation is that this cat is just an asshole and a bully and is going to be aggressive and antisocial no matter what.

There's a wide array of behavioral problems he might or might not have, including ones people dump their cats over like litterbox problems and aggression. Different cats take very different amounts of time to settle in new situations; he might spend weeks cowering, he might be fine after a couple days. I don't know what he likes, I don't know if he's smart or dumb, I don't know what he's like at all. The only thing I know for sure is that he's unhappy and he likes food.

I could talk your ear off about the personalities of a lot of the feral cats - Miss Calico is brave and bossy and likes attention, Jersey is calm but playful, Dr. Suess is awkward and kind of stupid, Mr. Bigface was an even-tempered gentleman of the highest calibre - but I just don't know about this guy. We'll see. Maybe I'll make a new cat friend; maybe this will be the most thankless task yet.

I'm trying to temper my expectations and stay aware that it's entirely possible that this won't work out. From what I've seen of him outside I don't think he'll have problems severe enough that there's no way for him to live a happy comfortable life, but I am bearing in mind that it is a possibility.

We'll be trapping him this week (inshallah) - I'll write about how that goes. Probably.