Fortune and Mishek, sharing a sunbeam in their garage kingdom...
In March of 2000, the local "cat lady's" house was condemned, and she moved
away, leaving behind six unfortunate cats in a house entirely filled with debris. After
several weeks without food, they were hungry enough so that I was able to trap them,
and to relocate them to my garage, so that they would not lose their lives when the
only home that they had ever known was torn down around them.
After the disappearance of one of the two outdoor cats I had been feeding,
I moved Auggie, the remaining outdoor cat, into permanent residence in the
garage in 2001. He was quite happy with the arrangement, since he was well acquainted
with the garage cats, having come from the same house only months earlier...
They weren't exactly wild, but they weren't very tame either - let's call them
feral house cats... One, a black and white adolescent kitten I named Homer, was
fortunate enough to find a home, one - a little orange and white cat I named Moses -
quietly passed away one evening in 2001, and another, a little crippled girl
named Mercy passed away in 2005. Auggie left us in 2006.
So, the three remaining cats, Fortune, Mishek, and Maizey, amicably share a
garage that has acquired some very un-garagelike furnishings - a heater in the winter,
a fan in the summer, a rug on the table in front of the window, cat beds, chairs,
toys, scratching posts, even rugs on the floor!