Our Cats: His Name Is Gizmo

So right around when I had started feeding Very Feral in the last blog post, I get a knock at my door one afternoon.  It's another property owner from around the corner.  She'd been managing all kinds of wildlife on her acreage for years, but she couldn't really do much anymore.  She'd previously given me open ended access to her acreage on the condition that I would help her TNR (trap-neuter-return) any feral cats on her property and help her manage predatory animals.

So anyway, she's at my door one afternoon saying she's hearing "strange noises" coming from the woods. She can't be too sure, but she thinks she heard muffled whimpers for help and possibly a rattlesnake.  I packed up a couple "things" and went out with a friend to where she said she heard this.  We walked around for probably 20 minutes, never saw or heard anything.  No ground sign of anything either.  

So fast forward a couple days and the coyotes were extra close late one night.  Two different packs of at least four coyotes a piece were howling. One pack sounded like they were near or right behind my neighbors house - the same general area we had checked a few days before and found nothing. The other pack sounded about a quarter to a half mile away, towards the lake.  

My roommate and I checked out the first location near her house, again nothing. Another let down. Obviously the coyotes and whatever else was there had found a quick out, or bedded down somewhere we couldn't find.  We moved on. We had two Q-Beam LED spotlights constantly searching the night.  You have to be there to appreciate how pitch black it is during a new moon when you're away from city lights in the middle of nowhere. We were giving it our best trying to find whatever was there. Back in the truck, we continued down the dirt road. About halfway to the lake there was something in the middle of the road.  We couldn't exactly tell what we were looking at, so we got out and started our approach on foot.  I employed the blind-the-hell-out-of-it technique as we walked up slowly.  Didn't take too long to realize it was a dark colored feral cat, but the cat had something in-front of it.  It was the tiniest feral kitten I had ever seen in the wild.  So my thought process is I'm staring at something that will probably be eaten by coyotes later tonight.  Best case scenario, tomorrow night.  If this kitten has any chance at life, it has to leave with me.  The adult cat takes off when we get close.  The kitten, still being blinded by my 11 billion candlepower spotlight doesn't know which direction to run.  It waits until it hears me start running toward it to try and make an escape... Too late. I reach out and grab it. 

This is what I grabbed: 

His body from his head to tail was the width of an adult palm. Eyes nearly crusted over from some type of infection, plus literally hundreds of fleas.  Everyone that helped de-flea this cat couldn't believe the amount of adult fleas this poor little guy had on him.  When we gave him his first bath, the water turned pink from blood leaking from all his flea bites.  We gave him four baths that day in total.  Took him to the vet, got him some medicine and his shots. Sure I could just have just fixed him up and released him back into the wild, but it didn't feel right. Being an outside cat even seemed way out of character for him.  So I kept him. 

On November 25th, 2012 I tweeted this:

The tweet reads "I love my Gizmo. You don't want to know where I found him."

With this picture attached:

I named him Gizmo. He's one of the sweetest cats I've ever met.

He's awesome because his father is awesome. His father is Very Feral.

This is the Gizmo in his natural environment.