Going For a Record

This is Astrid. She is in my bathroom. Astrid is pregnant.

Astrid (the name intended for Dabney before he had the discourtesy to be a mancat) had been appearing irregularly about my apartment building for a couple of months. She seemed very skittish but was not feral; she would consent to be petted now and then. I wanted to catch her - partly to have her right eye seen to; it is cloudy, with a dark blue patch in it, though it seems not to be troubling her - but she showed up too infrequently, and without warning. Then, I and other tenants noticed that Astrid was becoming wider.

She’d been coming to outside food-bowls - mine and others - for a while, so I brought in a trap from the rescue-group to which I belong, and prepared for an impromptu capture. Last evening, I had my opportunity. Astrid came to eat from the hard-food bowl, but I knew she preferred soft. While she ate the hard, I retrieved the trap and some soft-food bait. She lazed on shaded grass while I set it up - another sign of her (mostly) socialised nature. She could smell the food inside, so I left her to it. Unfortunately, I had not set the small dish back far enough in the cage for her weight to trigger the door. I hurried back inside for some Temptation Treats, which I sprinkled deeper in the trap. This worked, and I caught her.

Astrid spent last night in my bathroom. I doubt that she slept much, because she used much of the time to pound on the door. But she ate quite a bit last evening, and she used the litter-box provided, an excellent sign of her adaptability to the inside; also, an indication that she had been an insider-cat previously.

She is young, I am sure; she has a juvenile’s face. If I am right, she probably won’t have many kittens. When she does, she will be in a setting prepared for the event: she is being moved to another foster-home in our group later this morning. There really isn’t any room in our groups’ foster-homes (we don’t have a shelter), as may be inferred by the fact that I have five - six, with Astrid - cats in my apartment (if she’d had her kittens last night, I would have had a record feline population.) But some homes are better suited for certain kinds of situations. Astrid will be well cared for, and she will have her kittens in a safe environment with humans experienced in this sort of thing.

Astrid’s new life - and those of her soon-to-be offspring - is about to begin.