The taming of the Me...

This is about my boy Dudley, my beautiful rescued angry tabby cat. You see he and me met by chance, I had gone to see about rescuing another cat. I had gone out into the inside outside cat area of this tiny rescue centre. There sat on a shelf was one of those triangular cat bed things with a pair of terrified eyes staring out. I went up to it and popped my hand up to stroke him and as I felt down his spine I was horrified how thin he was. He was excruciatingly thin, as I pulled my hand out the lady said oh it wouldn't hurt but he will hiss and growl. To her amazement he had done neither. After talking to my partner I said I couldn’t leave him here, he was badly stressed and not eating. I had no idea on what colour he was or how many legs he had but I didn’t care I just knew I had to get him out. He stayed in the small triangular bed and we just picked the whole thing up and put it in a pet carrier that the top could be removed. We actually hadn’t banked on actually bringing a cat home with us and certainly not this one. The lady there was happy to see the poor boy go. He was apparently from a barn cat trapping exercise and had been castrated then the owners of the barn didn’t want him back. He was an adult cat who had no interaction with people at all. Somehow he and me had made a connection. We already had two rescued cats, brothers, who we knew accepted cats into the house (we had found a young cat/kitten who we took in until her owners could be found, she’d got herself lost). Dudley (his new name, we didn’t think Pluto suited him and we were Peter Cook and Dudley Moore fans) was put in a quiet room on his own, with food, water and dirt box. I sat in there with him for hours just gently talking and offering food, for days on end. We still had no idea what he looked like as he was still ensconced in the cat triangle bed. I rang the vets as I was concerned he hadn’t used the dirt box (or anywhere else), their concern was his urine would crystallise causing blockages. I’ve never been more ecstatic over a cat wee before in my life. We carried on like this for weeks which rolled into months. He would eat ham from my hand and had moved from the cat triangle bed to wedging himself under the futon. Finally I could see he was tabby, with all his legs and a tail so thin it was basically bone. It broke my heart to think what must be going through his mind to behave the way he did. Finally we got to the stage where he would come out from under the futon to eat from my hand. I was still sitting on his level and gently talking to him. We carried on like this for weeks as his trust in me grew. He would let me gently stroke his head, sometimes he was in attack mode which I allowed him to know I wasn’t going to react to. The next stage was leaving the door open to see if he would venture out of the room, he would poke his head out but that was it. His first venture out of the room was walking between my feet, he had decided it was only safe to leave if I was protecting him. We got as far as the hall. Our bedroom was opposite the room door he was in. We left both doors open and he managed to make it to our wardrobe and spent a few more months between there and under the futon. He would leave the room only between my feet as I walked to begin with. I would sit crossed legged on the floor and he would hunker down in my lap. My other boys would show a mild curious interest of him and they just accepted him. As time went on our bond just strengthened. He totally trusted me and allowed me into his world completely an experience never before or since had with another living soul. He was my shadow and I was his life.