The Cycle Of Life: Please Welcome Templeton Options

[Ken Albin]

It's been 4 months since the horrible blow of Iona's death. The wife Karen called and asked if she could bring home a cat for the evening who she was taking to a foster parent in our rescue group the next day. I told her absolutely do not bring this cat home because we already had 9 cats here and I was still in shock over Iona. Karen did what long term married people usually do and she completely ignored what I said and brought this cat home. After some griping I reluctantly went into the cat;s room and promptly got hissed at before he dove under the table. He would passively let me touch him while he buried his head and looked away.

Here is his story. He was one of 6 cats in a local feral colony. Someone had complained and animal control was trying to trap and euithanize the group. He was trapped by our local rescue group and put up for adoption after neutering. Our group's vet, whom I do not have any trust in, lopped off a big part of an ear to mark him as feral when he was neutered. He was shown for adoption but was so timid he would probably never be adopted without a lot of work. The foster was new to ferals and was not working much with him. When I heard all of this I looked at Karen and told her she would regret bringing him home because he was now a mamber of the family and would be staying forever with us.

The foster had named him Funny Face, which I thought sounded like he was being made fun of. Karen, being a fan of the show the A Team, said the character Templeton Peck was nicknamed "Face" so why not call him Templeton.

Templeton turned out to be a lot more feral than I originally thought. What I thought was shyness was just abject fear resulting in a passive submission to being touched and petted. After a couple of days when he became a little more self assured I discovered he was totally feral. As he came out of his passive shell he began greeting me with hissing, spitting, growling, hiding, and then clawing my hands when I got close. to him. I had to back off treating him as semi-feral and go to my full "Doctor Doolittle" approach I use to tame completely feral cats. I very slowly have been gaining Templeton's trust though he still hisses at me occasionally. It's been 3 weeks now and he is out with the others. Templeton is shy but he is curious and follows me around watching me. He is finally starting to realize I am not going to eat him so he is beginning to relax more around us. He is learning how to play with toys and is also playing chase with our cat Sam. I have him at the point now where I would call him semi-feral. It will take another few months of work before Templeton will be a reasonably tame house cat but he has already come a long way from the terrified guy who arrived. Here he is stretched out relaxing. He seems to finally be enjoying being here and is just starting to trust me a little bit. I am working a lot with Templeton each day and I think that one day soon he is going to be a real snuggle cat (just not quite yet!).

Ken Albin

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