Feral Cat Fridays: Guildenstern the Golden Star
The Water Tub Monster adventure was one of the rare times when all 3 of Herkemina’s kittens were not acting as a unit. Meet Guildenstern, the kitten who was mysteriously AWOL while Georgette and Rosenkrantz confronted Fuzzy Tux at the water hole.
Rosenkrantz owed a debt (or a curse) to Guildenstern because she was indirectly responsible for his name. Guildenstern quickly came to mind when we first saw the beautiful golden kitten, and Rosenkrantz was an unavoidable companion name. (Georgette’s name was predestined. As a black cat, she was going to be George or Georgette, depending on what we learned from the vet when the litter was neutered.)
Guildenstern’s life in the colony illustrates the pattern that many ferals followed. After arriving from the wilds as a kitten she gradually began to hang out closer and closer to the house and became moderately comfortable in our presence.
She learned to be a cat in our yard, playing and stalking insects and lizards.
As she grew up she was welcomed to the crowd by Stoney, the official greeter and comforter.
After her TNR process (you can see her tipped ear as she peers through the railing) she settled in to a comfortable life among her peers, watching the yard from the deck and enjoying the sun in the trees.
After years of tending to the colony with TNR, food, and care, we’re down to 2 old-timers. If we were able to give those many otherwise uncared-for cats a life like Guildenstern’s we felt we’d done our job.
That cat seems lit from the inside. What a beautiful creature! The photo of her adorning that fern cracks me up. I had to move my favorite columnar cactus because the squirrels kept jumping up and sitting on it.
She was a beautiful cat and she became quite friendly as she matured. There’s a story similar to your squirrels and cactus problem behind that photo of her in the plant. Loretta got that black metal dome structure Guildenstern is under to deter cats from sitting in the plants on the deck. As you can see, it didn’t work.