Cats and Kittens

In the years after my son left for college, I was having a hard time to adjust to this new change in my life. I was no more a mom who woke up early to prepare breakfast for my son, and who followed his studies and sports activities. The empty place in my life was gradually taken up by my pets. I had always loved to have pets, but we only had parakeets in the house; there was a neighbor's a dog who spent most of her time at our place, but we could not have any cats because my son was allergic to them.

One day in September 2005, I noticed that my neighbor had a few little cats running around in his garage. He told me that they were from neighbors across; their dog had chased them away and they sought refuge in his garage. He felt pity for them and started to feed them, so they stayed at his place. I thought they were cute and I wanted to have them. I started feeding them, and one day they moved to my garage. The mother of the family of cats was black, and she had 3 kittens; one was female, completely gray, and the other two were male, black with touches of white on the face and paws. The mother and two of her kittens came to us but one of the males was too afraid. He remained around but I was never able to get near him.

Later on the cats grew up living in the garage; I was not able to touch them much and could only feed them. Sometimes the mother cat would come to our front door, but soon she was gone for good.
The next year, the grey cat was pregnant and we found her with four little kittens. They were very cute and we went crazy about them. Two kittens were black and two were white with a touch of smoky grey on the ears, paws, and tails. All of a sudden we had seven cats to take care of.

Having cats everywhere, I needed to find animal shelters in the area. This seemed the best solution: I could take care of couple of cats, but not seven. Finding a home for all the cats was hard; I was only able to give away one kitten to a neighbor. Efforts to take them to the animal shelter were not successful, because the shelters in our area were already full with cats that needed homes. To avoid getting overrun with cats, we had the challenge of getting them neutered or spayed, but we succeeded to take them to our local clinic. Because they were still feral cats, it was hard to catch them and put them in carriers!

After all this, our cats slowly disappeared. One was hit by a car, the others were gone without trace. Today we have only one black cat left, which is domesticated enough to come inside and take a nap near me on the sofa. Sometimes she will sleep the whole evening till late, around 10 pm, and then she will leave to go to the garage where she lives up on a litle loft. She has a comforter there inside a box.
Now I am temporarily living out of the State to be with my son and I miss her so much, but my neighbor is taking care of her, she feeds her every day, and she can see her around in the garden. The cat, her name Pisso, continues to live in the garage. I miss her so much and look forward to go back and see her.