Cat Census

Cats that live in my house:  3

Stray cats I feed on my porch:  9

Cats now living in my garage:  1

What the heck!  I intentionally built shelters on the front porch for the stray cats for the winter time.  I'm ok with that.  On Saturday, I found out I had a squatter living in my garage!  Ugh!

I came home Saturday afternoon, and while I was taking things out of my car, one of my outside cats, Blondie, came running into the garage.  Every once in awhile, one of the outside cats gets nosey and wants to look around.  That lasts only until I start closing the door.  Once that door starts coming down, the cats will generally run to get out of there.

So, Blondie came running in, and she headed to a corner of the garage where a lot of things are stacked up.  My garage is a two car garage, but one side is storage only.  Anyway, she is on the storage side and acting like she's looking for something.  Then, she started meowing and I was shocked to hear something coming from the pile of tarps meowing back at her!  Are you kidding me?  Who is in my garage!?

I climb over a bunch of stuff and I'm trying to look in that corner.  Something is meowing a LOT.  I am confident it is a cat, and I'm guessing it's one of my front porch cats, but at the moment I have no idea who it is.  I try to move stuff around, trying to get the cat to come out.  No go.  I ended up calling Ron inside of the house and asked him to bring me out a bowl of food and water as I believe that a cat has been stuck in my garage.

Ron the rescuer came out with the two bowls.  Between the two of us, we are digging through things, trying to find out where the cat is.  We put the food out on the floor hoping that would coax him out.  Finally, when Ron moved something, I saw a cat run out of that hiding place, but right into another one.  It was Rocky!  Rocky is a beautiful little gray kitten named because he looks like he's gone a few rounds with something.  His tail has a distinct bend it in.  To my uneducated eye, it looks like his tail may have been broken at one time.  His one eye also had a black spot on it.  Again, the poor guy looks like he's had a rough first year of life.

In spite of it, for a stray cat, Rocky is very loving and gentle.  He is one of the cats that greets me when I come home, will wind around my legs waiting for me to pet him.  Like all stray cats, they are never on the porch 24/7.  The cats come and go and can be gone for days at a time.  The more I thought about it, I know it's been DAYS since I've seen Rocky.  I didn't think anything about it because like I said, that's not unusual for a stray cat.

So I believe poor Rocky has been in my garage for a few days!  I found a pile of poop in the middle of the floor (no, not MY poop, but I believe Rocky's!) that looks like it's a few days of poop.  I have no idea what he's been eating, but I've been putting food and water in the garage since Saturday afternoon.  I figured if he's been stuck in there for a few days, he's hungry, he's scared.  I'll make sure he eats and drinks and when he gets his strength back, hopefully he will come back out of the garage on his own.

One of Ron's suggestions was to just leave the garage door open so that Rocky can leave when he's ready.  I'm afraid in my neighborhood that some of the neighbors would take that as an invitation to help themselves to anything not nailed down.  Plus, I was afraid of what other critters might take refuge IN my garage along with Rocky!

I did get Rocky to come out of his hiding place this morning when I took food out to him when I fed the rest of the outside cats.  I put the bowls down right inside of the door and Rocky came right to them to eat.  He wouldn't leave the garage but at least I watched him eat.  I thought that was a good sign.  He ate the food that I left there on Saturday, but only after he was left alone in the garage.   So, I definitely think he's feeling better.   Now if he will just move back to the front porch with the rest of them instead of his private quarters, I'll be happy!  I scoop enough cat poop in my life, I don't need to be scooping it off of the floor of my garage!

Update:  A little while ago I looked on the front porch and Rocky is out of the garage and back where he belongs!  He finally left the garage one of the times I've been in and out of there today!  At least my cat drama is over for the weekend and all is well!