Larry, The Cat

This is the story of how Larry, the cat, came into my life. The place where I work is a safe haven for animals, including dogs, puppies, an occasional raccoon, and a feral cat colony. Feral cats can be real sketchy. Nevertheless, we feed them daily, catch the adults and get them neutered, catch the babies and domesticate them, and try to find them forever homes. Their numbers change constantly. Needless to say, this makes my job very interesting and fun. At one point, we had approximately 12 kittens to adopt out and were scrambling for homes for them.

One morning my co-worker received a call from her best friend. She was told that a kitten had appeared on her doorstep and would not leave her house. She was not in the position to care for an animal and she knew that we would take good care of him. She named him Larry after a friend of hers.

My co-worker and her friend were finally able to catch the kitten. He was about 6 weeks old, hungry and scared out of his mind. She brought him to work and we began to he task of socializing him. He was reluctant to get with the program. He had been used to eating out of trash cans and one day we saw him disappear into one of our trash cans. As I picked him up out of the trash can, he growled at me from around a large subway sandwich he had found. At the time, he weighed less than a pound, but he was determined to survive.

Larry became an escape artist. Every chance he got, he would zip out the door and run to the feral colony out back. A couple of times he managed to hide overnight. The third time he escaped was on a Friday evening and since we don't open on the weekends, he was outside until Monday morning. I came to work to find a very frightened and unhappy kitten. He was too scared to come out of the woods so he just hung at the edge crying. I lured him out with chicken pieces and I was finally able to catch him.

I put him in the crate so he could not get out again and all he would do was cry. I picked him up to comfort him and he tried to get so close to me that it felt like he was velcro-ed to my skin. All day I alternated holding him and trying to work. That is the day that I believe Larry imprinted on me.

Larry is now about 9 months old and he has lived with me for the last 5 months. He is very affectionate and very possessive of me. He still will not allow anyone but me to pick him up. I can do almost anything to him and he tolerates it, such as ; cleaning his ears, picking burrs, and giving him wet wipe baths.

I am very glad that he has come into my life and I believe he is very happy living in my home.