Mabel the Christmas cat

This was as close as I could get.

About a month ago, we noticed a cat skulking around the back lot at work. She'd meow mournfully in the morning, and so I bought some food and stuck a bowl around the back of the building. Pretty soon she was out there waiting by the bowl when I got to work.

Captive!

We couldn't get a hand on her but she didn't seem totally feral, and after a wet cold weekend where I worried about her a fair amount, I decided to catch her and bring her home.

So began Operation Catch A Cat.

Getting to know each other.

On the 22nd, I dragged Maggie's dog crate to work and lined the bottom with an old towel. I stuck it out back near her food bowl and waited for her to show up. About 11am someone buzzed me and said she was there so I dashed out and put some food in the bowl and put it just inside the cage door.

Meantime, I had tied a string to the door and ran it thru the top bars and over the back, so that we could yank it shut after she went in. It took about 20 minutes of moving the bowl further in after she took a piece, but finally she lifted that last hind leg in and we had her!

Ostrich cat.

Carried her into my office to cheers from the other employees. She meowed for a while but soon settled down and watched people come and go. Steve stuck his hand in the cage and had her purring in about 3 minutes so she must have been a pet who got dumped since there's no houses within a couple miles of here. If I could get my hands on the people who do stuff like that...

I put her in the guest room since it isn't in use, so she has a soft bed to sleep on and a windowsill to watch the neighborhood from. I blocked the door so she can come and go but the dog can't get in. Maggie was thrilled to have a kitty in the house, but Mabel swatted her right off the bat and now Mags scoots past her well out of paw range.

So far, she much prefers her suite of rooms to hanging out with us, so we go get her in the evening when we settle down in front of the tube and she'll sit on our laps and get petted for a couple hours. Last night for the first time, she came into the family room on her own but dashed back out after we spotted her.

The Great Face-off of 2012.

She's pretty small and one of those cats who weighs nothing at all. It's like picking up a very soft bag of feathers. She doesn't have fleas but her breath is atrocious so I'll get her to the vet this week and have her checked out.

Right now she's lying at the top of the stairs and I can just see her ear and eye peering down at me. Hopefully she'll get used to everything and become part of the family. It's nice to have a kitty around again.

Happy purring kitty in her bed.