I'm the neighborhood Cat Lady (or one of them at least). I own cats, foster cats, rescue cats, and do TNR. In addition, I am a volunteer with RedRover Responders (formerly United Animal Nations/Emergency Animal Rescue Service), which is a program that does emergency animal sheltering in the US and Canada. See http://www.redrover.org for more info. I also teach pet owners about being disaster prepared.
I have four cats of my own. Lilly has been with me the longest; about ten years or so. She's a solid white shorthair who I found in the alley. She was a teenage mother with four kittens. I found homes for the kittens, but she ended up staying. Magic is a solid black longhair boy with strong Maine Coon characteristics who was hanging around my yard a number of years ago. Once he sniffed me, he decided I was OK and he followed me right in the house. After I couldn't find his owners or a new home, I ended up keeping him. He's a major love-bug. Chelsie is a foster I got from a rescue up north who thinks she came from a hoarding situation. While showing her for adoption, I realised I had a perfect therapy cat here; she was starved for affection and never met a lap she didn't like. So she stayed. More recently, I was feeding the feral cats in my yard. One was a born feral; he wouldn't come any closer than the length of my yard, even after four years of feeding. A much newer one would let me come within about 6-10 feet before he ran, so I figured he was a reverted-stray feral. Over the course of a spring and summer, he got to where he would run up to rub on me when he heard me come out. He's a true love-bug too, though with the bad habit of wanting to nurse on your shirt. I had no room to take him in, but one day he turned up with an abcessed leg, and that was that. I was determined to get him into the Humane Society, but then he and Magic bonded and I couldn't bear to separate them. So... I've got four of my own and a fluctuating number of fosters. "sigh!"
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