Coaxing a stray, abused animal to trust you is a long game. And I mean loooong.
April 2019 I adopted a weeny black stray cat who literally marched into my Thai living room (we have open bifold doors to the garden in our traditional Thai teak house) and mewed pitifully for food. He was painfully malnourished and can't have been more than 8 weeks old. I named him Moxa (we like to keep the natural & herbal medicine theme alive š) and every house within 1km radius flatly denied owning him. And so he stayed.
It must have been about September 2019, during the full deluge phase of the Asian monsoon rains, that we started seeing a mangy, bedraggled, often wounded old black Tom cat lurking round the end of the garden near the shed, and sometimes stealing food from our other cats' bowls in our open-to the elements Thai kitchen. We opted for a compete tolerance-welcome policy, and have left extra food out for him since. It's my last thing to do at night before turning off the lights downstairs: to leave a treat out for MD in case he comes by hungry.
We've named him MD - short for "Moxa's Dad" - basically because we assume he probably is. And because Moxa tolerates him and doesn't fight with him. Our little ginger girl cat, Cinnamon, quite likes him and I have seen them lazing out behind the house together several times now.
Three weeks ago things changed up when I found him hiding in our kitchen at the back of a low, open shelf. He was wounded and clearly looking for a safe place. Every time I tried to touch him, he bolted, limping away on 3 legs and clearly terrified.
Unsure of what to do, I started pretending to ignore him. And so when I saw him close by out of the corner of my eye, I started simply singing to him and telling him he was welcome to call this pace home. He likes that.
Three #caturday's ago I mentioned MD in my Heroes of Covid Quarantine post, and said he was basically our 0.5 wanna-be cat and how I was aspiring to allow me to pat him.
I'm sooooo happy to be able to share some pictures of MD, who is now our 0.7 cat.
He let me pat him!!!
He's clearly still very sore and limping on one back leg - it looks as if some Thai neighbour has hit him with a rock (via slingshot) on the back haunch. It's a favourite Thai way to kill birds and squirrels who steal the rice, and also the way many Thai farmers kill the chicken for their dinner.
He's going grey and has healing bite and scratch wounds all over.
He's twice now allowed me to very, very gently pick him up and carry him to the food bowl zone. My goal? To have him comfortable enough this coming week for him to allow me to give him some worm medicine, since he's painfully thin and always super hungry. It needs a bit of trust and planning to not freak him out, and to not scare him off. I'm thinking worm paste wrapped in bits of bacon or fresh fish right now. Any suggestions?
The damage done to an animal who has been kicked, abused or hurt by humans is heartbreaking to see. It's taken this poor half-starving animal 8 months to let someone touch him. He's also very frightened of fast foot movements, so I try to walk super slowly and silently around him, with no sudden movements or else he bolts.
He's such a sweeties and asks for little. When I came home today, my daughter Miss 15 reported that MD had been sitting in our living room when she got up, and that he seemed hungry. And so she sat and sang to him while he ate, to make sure none of the other cats bossed him away from the food. š
I'm liking that he feels safe enough sometimes to come and lay close to my feet when I'm working on my laptop out on the front porch. And that our own 3 cats don't fight with him at all.
Setting the intention to get him wormed this week and to make a safe spot for him where he can shelter inside during the heavy rains in the months ahead. Very much looking forward to sharing the next steps towards MD 1.0 and full family member status in the weeks and months ahead.
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
-Mahatma Gandhi
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