Bad Cat

originally posted 15 NOV 2014

For about five years, we lived in the coastal hills in Oregon. Loved it. We had property that was densely populated with very tall Oregon white oaks, blackberry bushes and poison oak.

Because I am very allergic to poison oak, any outdoor cats had to stay exclusively outdoors, otherwise they'd get the oils all over the furniture and I would be a swollen mess for weeks.

We had two cats that started out as indoor cats but just were too intrigued, escaping out every chance they got. They seemed content outside and we had a large cat house for them.

Sadly, people would drop off animals in our woods. One of these animals was a cat that looked a bit similar to the photo above only he was much, much scruffier. Honestly, I think he was completely feral so likely his mother had been dropped off at some point. He wouldn't let us near him and he'd pick fights with our cats. He was a big boy too. I didn't have the heart to catch him, so we adopted him. My son, who was about four or so at the time named him 'Bad Cat' because he was so mean to the other cats.

Eventually the cats started getting along better and then our Siamese and he would curl up together on cold nights. He never let us touch him the entire time. I worked on it and got close. He'd come up near me and lay down but he did not want to be touched.

When my husband deployed for more than a year, we decided to put the house on the market so I could move down to California to be closer to family. A wonderful family bought the house. I talked to them about Bad Cat. I knew there was no way we'd be able to get him in a carrier and he would be miserable leaving. They agreed to take care of Bad Cat for us which I thought was sweet.