After all, we thought he was marking up our area rug and I was not about to have him start marking the couch, our new Tempurpedic, whatever struck his fancy. Justin was ready to send him to the animal shelter (much against my dismay) when I realized, we could let him outside!
Malcolm was a feral cat when we got him at 6-months old. When we lived at Shirley Lane, he occassionally, and I mean OCCASSIONALLY, wandered around our backyard for a few minutes here and there.
We moved to our current home and one day we decided to let him out. And he ran out of the yard as fast as he could. He was FREE!
His roaming never lasted very long as every day over my lunch hour he would come back to the house to eat. Then he'd be back by bedtime to eat some more...
Then the flea fiasco of Fall 2010 was more than we could handle so we decided he would never see the outdoors again...that lasted until he started marking on the area rug.
He's been outside ever since. It started out pretty typical, he'd be gone in the morning and back at night.
Mid-May rolled around and Malcolm disappeared for 48 hours...2 entire days. No sign of him at all. I decided he was flat as a pancake on a street somewhere OR he took it upon himself to leave us. Regardless to say, the sensitive side of me hoped it was the latter of the two.
I had given up on him when the next morning, I got up for the gym and lo and behold, Malcolm was on our backporch at 5am! I let him in for "treat time," told Justin the exciting news and then put him back out before I left the house.
The day went on and well, Malcolm was no where to be found. He had definately just used me for some food.
Later that afternoon received a text message from my boss stating her husband had seen Malcolm down by the Chamber of Commerce...what the hell was he doing down there?! He's not the friendliest of cats and is easily spooked--and he picked a fairly busy part of town to prowl?! Jezzzzzzus...
I thought about sending Justin down there as I had to be home with the floor guy but we later gave up looking for him (aren't we nice kitty parents???). If he wanted to come back, he could. After all, during his absence a super friendly yellow kitten decided to grace our porch and he could easily be replaced!
I still don't know why Malcolm decided to visit the Chamber of Commerce...I like to tell people he was "attending meetings." He is, after all, quite the serious cat.
Malcolm finally showed up the next day and has stuck close to the house ever since. He's either in the garage (even though he refuses to come out half the time when we call him) or laying on one of our porches. It's kinda nice...I don't worry about him being a flapjack...
However, sometimes it's a bit much. The other day I locked myself out of the house *again* so I decided to kill time by weeding the flowerbed. Malcolm had a blast rolling around in all the wood chips--but everytime I reached down for a weed, he would force himself under my hand so I would have to pet him. This charade went on for about a good 30 minutes before he decided to be a good kitty cat and go people-watch from the porch.
On the upside, when Malcolm disappeared for nearly three days, not once did we ever once suspect that someone took him. One, he won't get near strangers even if they call his name and two, when you're missing half your facial hair, you're just not very appealing...
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| His hair had started to thin some before we initially let him outside...I didn't think much about it until one day he had NO hair above his eyes. We took him to the vet and turns out, he has Athlete's Foot. On his face. Now we have to put Athlete's Foot medicine on his face and ears twice a day...the hair is slowly coming back but it still looks gawd-awful in person. It's going to be a while before it all returns as 10 -minutes after I put the cream on, Malcolm starts wiping it off. For an outdoor kitty, he's sure become high maintenance! |
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