I first encountered Tilly the Cat in a typical horse girl fashion; I was riding Lucy back to the barn when I saw something move in the underbrush. Since the stables were located in the outskirts of LA in the mountain foothills we regularly saw bobcats, hawks, vultures, and of course the coyote that regularly napped ringside.
It wasn’t any of those.
I thought I was delusional when Irealized that the thing in bushes was a longhaired, Siamese-ish cat. Where the hell had it come from? And how had it survived? There were no houses around for miles and even the bunnies stayed hidden from the constant predators.
The cat was wily enough to duck under a plant as soon as it sensed it had been spotted. But still.
As soon as Lucy was back into her stall, I went to where I’d seen the cat. It hadn’t gone far, but wouldn’t let me near. From what I could tell it was young and very scared.
I couldn’t leave a cat where it would be eaten by something, probably sooner than later. But I had four dogs and absolutely no desire for a cat.
Oh, well.
I started bringing cans of cat food to where it hung out. Days passed and it would eat, but never let me touch it. I was getting discouraged.
Then I discovered that it had been hunting in the barn feed room. At the time I thought I was smarter than a stray cat, so I formulated a plan. I borrowed a Havaheart trap from the animal shelter and set it up in the grain room, baited with the smelliest can of cat food I could find.
The next morning I was at Santa Anita around 6 watching the horses work when my phone rang. “Come get your cat,” yelled the head groom over the sound of a yowling cat in the background.
My cat? I didn’t have a cat. I started to argue and then I remembered.
I picked up the trap with the cat and took it directly to my vet for a basic health check and shots since now, apparently I had a cat.
I warned Dr. Steve that I knew nothing about the now silent cat huddled in the trap, and suggested he wear protective gloves in case it was vicious. He ignored me and plunged his hand in the trap and withdrew a now catatonic cat. (I later learned whenever anyone new handled her, Tilly went limp.) He checked her over and pronounced her a healthy and spayed female.
When I asked how he could tell she was fixed, since her stomach was covered with dirty, matted hair. He pointed to her ear. It was split.
“Trap and release people notch their ears so they can tell which cats have spayed.”
Good to know.
He stuffed her back into the cage and sent us home.
Since I apparently now had a cat, I needed stuff. I stopped on the way home at a pet store to pick up cat food, a litter box and cat toys. (She never did play with the toys, but the dogs enjoyed them all a lot. Particularly the very realistic mice.)
Once home, I shoved my way by my dogs and took the cat into the tv room, now officially dubbed The Cat Room. As soon as I opened the trap, she dived under the couch.
I had no idea when I’d see her again so I set up her food and the litterbox and left her alone. When I checked on her a few hours later the food had been eaten and the litter box used.
That evening I ate my dinner- spaghetti with sauce - on the floor in her room with the dogs locked out. I ignored their noses snuffling at the door and pretended to watch TV. Eventually a small, skinny, filthy, cat edged up to my dish and licked it clean.
She sat and stared at me for a little while. It was progress. But as soon as I made eye contact, she ducked under the couch.
That night I closed the dog door and kept all the dogs in my bedroom, and let the kitty explore the rest of the house. The last time I had a cat, it roamed freely and ate on the refrigerator where the dogs couldn’t get at his food.
In the morning the cat was nowhere to be found. Missing. Nowhere in the house. The windows were closed, the dog door locked but the cat was gone.
Cats can fit in tiny spaces, but she had vanished. The dogs were useless, they just kept snuffling around the living room.
Eventually I went in the back yard and looked up. There, on the roof was ‘my’ cat. As soon as she spotted me, she took off.
Dandy.
The dogs kept sniffing around the fireplace. That’s when I remembered that the flue on my fireplace was stuck in an open position.
Somehow ‘my’ cat had discovered that and climbed up the chimney.
After cursing my new-found responsibility, I printed up and posted a bunch of ‘missing cat’ fliers and headed back to the shelter to rent the trap again. That’s when I discovered they only loan their traps a limited number of times to the same people within a time period.
Obviously, it was onto the hardware store to buy a trap. My ‘free’ cat was getting expensive.
I set the shiny new trap out that evening, and baited it with smelly cat food and spaghetti sauce.
In the morning I checked the trap, and it was full. Unfortunately, in held my next door neighbor’s fat, furious, orange cat covered with red sauce.
After I released Fluffy, I went home to try again. My cat was sitting on my roof. I had another brilliant idea. That night I set up a path made of X-pens running from my fireplace into her room, baiting the whole way with stinky food.
In the morning the food was eaten, the box was used, and the cat was gone. She was on the roof again. I swear she was giving me the finger.
The damned cat was using my house as its personal Air BnB.
Now I was pissed, so I put the trap out again. This time, success!!!
Sort of.
My new kitty was filthy, matted and covered with sticky fireplace soot and sap. I wiped her down, but too really clean her would take a bubble bath and that was beyond both of us. So I left her alone. In a couple of weeks she had cleaned herself up.
After a few months she let me pet her. By then she had been named Tilly. Matilda when I was annoyed.
Tilly never really warmed up to the dogs, instead she hid under the couch when we were all in the room watching TV. I set up a crate with a fluffy pillow and the door facing the wall to give her a safe place to hang out with us.
I never left the door of her room open when I wasn’t there. Not only did I want to keep her away from the chimney, but I had four dogs, two Brittanys and two Danes. Some of them were just a little too interested in Tilly for me to trust them together when I wasn’t around to protect her.
To counteract keeping her locked in a room, I had a catio built so she could be outside safely. It was about eight feet tall and four feet wide. It had a bench with a pillow and a multi-tiered cat tree.
Tilly adored it. There was a huge bougainvillea filled with birds for her to watch. Occasionally the local feral cats came by. I think she taunted them with her cat snacks and abundant food.
Eventually my skinny, gunk covered cat transformed into a glossy, fluffy, 18 pound feline.
After having been grabbed, spayed and her ear cut, Tilly. never trusted strangers. Some of my house sitters never met her, even after being at my place a lot.
She also refused to ever hunt again. There was a time when I had a mouse infestation. I was sitting with Tilly in her room when I saw a mouse tail in the bookcase. Tilly saw it, and just looked at me with disgust. I called Poppy the Brittany, and she dispatched it in seconds
.It took Tilly a moment to adjust when I moved to the ranchette. There were no bushes near her catio which of course I brought, and no feral cats to torment, but it faced the paddock. She loved to lounge around watching the horses, and swat at the dogs when they ran by.
For a few years sparrows even nested on the catio roof, which seemed mean of them. Tilly would watch them come and go, but they were just out of paw’s reach. Her response was to pretend they didn’t exist. When the birds flew in and out, Tilly stomped back into her room, or stared intently at the horses.
After a couple of years in the new place she dropped a lot of weight quickly and stopped eating. She was in danger of developing fatty liver disease. The only way to keep her alive was to surgically install a feeding tube.
Tilly was catatonic the entire time she was at the vet clinic and was sent home almost immediately after surgery. I had to make a slurry out of prescription food and syringe it through the tube in her neck three times a day.
We both hated the process, but she wasn’t strong enough to fight. More than once I thought I was going to lose her. But after three months of tube feeding she was mostly recovered.
After that, she started joining us at night. She finally realized that the dogs weren’t going to bother her if just hung out.
At first she’d lie on her cat tree while we were all on the couch or floor. Eventually she moved to the top of her crate. One day she climbed onto the couch next to Jasper or Ruckus. She particularly liked to lie next to me while I sat in Mom’s recliner, but never in my lap.
Tilly was not a lap cat.
It wasn’t until last year, that Tilly felt secure enough to walk around the house with the dogs. She even slept on my bed with three of them a few nights. She started keeping us company in the kitchen.
16 years into our relationship, Tilly was a fully member of the family.
I still closed the baby gate to her room when I wasn’t there; otherwise the dogs would gobble her food. As much as she hated the prescription diet that her kidney disease now required, they loved it.
This winter she started to fail. I was giving her subcutaneous fluids every day. While Tilly was mostly patient about getting jabbed with a needle and lying still while the liquid dripped into her, she despised it, as did I.
For the first month she’d yowl and I bite my lip the whole time. She chomped me at least once a week. It seemed fair.
Fun times.
But the fluids did help, and she regained a bit of her old spunk. Tilly would still swat at whichever dog was brave enough to come close.
Even after getting her nose sliced more than once, Pen didn’t figure out that Tilly would NEVER, EVER play with her. It sort of became a game between the two of them.
When Tilly became too weak to jump up to her catio on her own, I’d plop her on the cat tree to feed her. If it was warm she’d wander out and sit in the sun until she moved back onto the couch.
Last month she climbed on my lap twice. It was literally the only time she ever did it.
A few days later, she began to breath roughly. We spent one last night sharing the recliner and watching TV.
The next day I stroked her while the vet euthanized her. It was the final kindness I could give her.
Even with four dogs, my house is eerily empty.
Per usual, your heart of gold saved her.