Orange and White in the Night

While Renn suffers from arthritis and is heading toward a dental procedure, and Neville grapples with his diabetes, there are other beasts to talk about. In particular, this time, it’s Arliss, one of my newer outsider-cats.

Arliss was extremely shy when I first began seeing him; he would remain a distance even from the glass doors to my concrete ditch, and run if, when eating from my food-bowl, he saw me watching him. Slowly, he appears to be accustomising himself to my presence. Hopefully, he understands that I am the human providing the food that he periodically eats.

Arliss, like Sable and, well, pretty much every outsider-cat, is an animal I would like to trap and socialise. But I know little about him. As may be seen from the pictures I took, he does not seem to be starving. Since he comes to Café Cosy only rarely, he must have other sources of food. Indeed, he may actually be an owned cat, whose owners let him wander about outside, and is timid only of strangers. For this reason, capturing him is not feasible.

His pattern of fur is unusual, I think. Orange and white, the former colour appears restricted to large patches on his back, head and face. In one photograph, his ears look grey, though in another, their backs, at least, are orange. Lighting at night is not dependable for accuracy in these matters.

As time goes by, I hope that he will become more used to me. Sable knows me and knows my voice. Once, when she was trotting away from another human, she halted when I called her, and came over to wait for some food. Yet she still won’t come within my reach. Arliss may be the same, especially since he and Sable know each other. But I hope some day, he will be more trusting. Until then, he knows where he can have decent food and clean water whenever he needs it. Perhaps the moment will arrive when he comes for the company, too.