Feral Cat Fridays: A First Puff of Fluff
I’ve held off covering Fluff because there is so much to say. After reviewing the many pictures we have I decided Fluff needed 2 weeks. She was a favorite of ours and a special buddy to many of the cats in the colony. This week I’ll cover her relationship with us.
I’ve mentioned Fluff before as one of Stranger’s 3 children (Fluff, Duff, & Stanley). All 3 kittens quickly fit in with the colony, but Fluff in particular seemed drawn to the house and was surprisingly comfortable around us. But that level of comfort never included touching or petting – underneath it all, Fluff had the feral shyness of her mother, Stranger.
As her name implies, she was a ball of white fluff. If we walked out in the yard to tend to bird feeders or add water to the tubs, that ball of Fluff was likely to be there. Most cats scattered when I mowed the yard but Fluff would watch, albeit from a safe distance. If we went out to enjoy the late afternoon and watch the sunset, Fluff would likely show up and sit on the car to watch with us. I’m not sure she knew why we were looking to the west, but she was happy to participate.
Fluff was a pro at finding the best places to nap. If she wasn’t sleeping on the deck rail with her feet dangling and her hair blowing in the breeze she could be found napping on a screen plant cover we kept in the old garden. The cover protected young plants from deer but Fluff thought it made a great air-conditioned bed.
If you wanted a cat bent on finding entertaining and photogenic places to pose, Fluff was your girl. If her pose didn’t get your attention her slightly strabismic blue eyes combined with her thoughtful expression would.
The final 3 photos clearly show Fluff’s rather aggressively tipped left ear. How much of the ear was removed varied from cat to cat, I suppose due to who was manning the spay/neuter clinic on any given day. Some cat’s ears were only sightly tipped, while others were noticeable from a distance. Fluff’s ear-tipping was among the most dramatic but it only added to her eccentric charm.
What happened to Fluff?
She lived a long and happy life, longer than average for a feral cat in a colony, likely because she was such a homebody. She died peacefully in her sleep one afternoon, napping in a favorite spot in the sun in front of one of our shelters. I didn’t even realize something had happened to her until I realized she hadn’t moved for a long time. She was curled up in her typical napping position, but when I checked on her I discovered she had passed away.
The photo of her on the plant cover’s a delight. She really was a pretty thing. If the eye color’s true in all the photos, she must have been younger in the first and last photos. The eye color seems to have changed in the photo showing her atop the car.
I can’t imagine that perch on the roadrunner is comfortable, but I’m not a cat. I did think about the roadrunner — and your roof — last Friday when that storm was roaming around. I saw the photos of the soft-ball sized hail that came through a roof in Sabinal. I hope you survived with everything intact.
I noticed that eye color change in the photos, too. In reality, her eyes stayed the same blue all her life. They look different in the car photo due to the orange light from the setting sun reflecting off the green car. That gave her eyes an amber cast.
We got rain but were thankfully spared the hail. The large hail and tornado damage wasn’t far from us and we’re counting our blessings that it missed us. We had a photo trip planned for Hondo and D’Hanis on Thursday, but had to put that off due to the storm. Maybe next week.
Good to hear that it missed you. It looks as though some badly needed rain will overspread parts of the state this weekend, including my area. I had been hoping to get out with the camera myself, but there’s always another time.