Here's Callie, also known as The Night Kitty. Despite the
glare of her eyes in the flash Callie is a sweet cat who wants to be petted more than she wants to eat. She appears
at sundown and runs away at dawn. She is terrified of the daylight world.
Callie showed up a year ago in March. She was about a year
old then. She was so feral that I couldn't catch a glimpse of her at first. I would just hear her running away.
My other outdoor cat eats on the front porch. They got to be friends and he let Callie eat his food.
Gradually Callie let me get closer and closer and after about four months she let me stroke her while she was eating.
She spent the cold winter nights in the heated doghouse on the front porch curled up with the other cat, Buddie. I worried
that she would get pregnant before she was tame enough for me to handle, but she didn't. I worried too, that the coyotes would
eat her, but so far they haven't.
I don't have to worry about pregnancy any more though.
If you look closely at the picture you can see that the tip of Callie's right ear has been amputated. It's rounded off
nicely and I didn't even notice it for a couple of weeks. I recently found out that it's what vets do when they spay
feral cats. They "notch" the ear to let people know that cat has already been fixed.
Callie lets me pick her up for a few seconds now. She runs
only about 10 feet away from my husband or son, but won't let them touch her. There are woods all around our house and
Callie apparently spends her daylight hours in a section that encompasses several acres. I'm hoping she will eventually
start staying at my house in the daytime.
Dawn comes and she tenses, looking all around, and flinching
at every noise. In short order she is off and into the woods. Something bad happened to her in the daylight.
Leslie
Recently I was at a show in Tyler, Texas when a former customer
came by. A couple of years previously she had purchased some Amazonite earrings from me. She told me she had selected
them because the green/blue color made her think of Antarctica and she really wanted to go there. "And did you?"
I asked.
She did. Turns out, she got a job in Antarctica (washing dishes)
and wore the earrings I made while there.
I think that is so cool! And daring! Antarctica is
one of the remaining areas that's not fully explored, right up there with the bottom of the ocean, outer space, plus some
jungles and probably some mountains in Tibet and China. It's really cold and I admire anyone daring enough to go someplace
that cold. My feet get painfully cold about November and don't warm up until March so I'm pretty sure I'd be at risk for some
amputations.
Plus, she was wearing my earrings. I'll never go to Antarctica,
but at least my earrings have been there.
BTW, the education level among the janitorial staff in Antarctica
is the highest of any place in the world. That's because there aren't many openings or chances to go there and people
with PhD's will apply for any job just for the great chance to work in Antarctica.
I don't know what her other dreams and goals are, but I
hope she's as successful at accomplishing them as she was with this one.
Leslie
