Do you ever wonder about your kitten's life before you met?

Festie was born here to a found Momma, almost 2 years ago. She has had a pretty cushy life. Just yesterday, dd was holding her cuddled, belly up, and said Festie was pretending she was still a kitten, because that is how dd held her as a tiny baby.

We got Garfield as a surrender from a family with kids...I know the first thing he did when he got her was jump up on the kids beds. So I feel bad for his family of kids, losing their cat and kittens because their Mom gave them up. And he had distemper...as did his Mom. So he sucks on dd's stuffed horse as if he was taken from his Mom too young. He was old enough, but since she was so sick, she probably wasn't able to nurse him like she should have.

Jazz is a former feral...I would like to know her story...but at least I got her young.

The ones I really puzzle over is the foster cats. Festie's Mom was a loveable girl, and was wearing a collar! No one answered the ad in the paper...was she abandoned, or is someone wondering about their lovely preggers kitty who was lost 2 years ago?

Or my current girl, Sarabi. She is such a love, but obviously not a house cat. Did she belong to a homeless person? Or was a family feeding her and petting her, keeping her as an outside pet? How many of her brown tabby babies are wandering the streets of Chicago?

I do have a feeling that I don't have the stomach to know all of what these kitties have faced. I'm real glad they can be housecats now!

I especially wonder about my boys, Wellington and Napoleon, whom I found abandoned on my steps at 5 months old. They were infested with every parasite possible, internal and external, and were little skeletons, but were really loving and sweet as soon as they stopped being frightened. So where did they come from, who put them there, and how did they know to leave them with me?

I wonder all the time. I found Kabou living under a car in my condominium complex. We guessed her age to be between 8-12 weeks old. I saw this tiny little white fluff ball with huge blue eyes crying her heart out, but she was so scared of people that she would run and hide if anyone came toward her. It took almost two weeks to catch her and she was definitely not socialized. How did she get there, where did she come from? I sure wish I knew, but am so thankful she picked someplace to hide where I could help her.

Wow! Such stories!
My baby girl was soooo friendly that I always wonder if she had a family when she was real little. A friend found her outside his house and knew we were looking for a cat, so called us and we came got her the next day. She was out in his yard mewling and he just picked her up and brought her inside, so it seems like she was socialized or at least not abused.
But she was only 2 1/2 months, and covered COVERED in fleas, terribles ear mites, roundworms, etc, so if she is someone's lost cat they weren't taking very good care of her.
It was just about to get cold, and I will never forget the first time I held her... I didn't really care about anything else right then.
She's also a perfect pet-- always friendly to everyone, forgiving, has never once missed the box, etc-- so I can't imagine someone just leaving her.
I hope she's glad she found us?

When i was little we had 2 cats that we rescued as kittens. One was a gray longhaired tabby named Clancy and he was found as a kitten in a snowbank with his mom. Just the two of them...i always wondered if there were more. His whole life with us he couldn't bear being cold. He would lie on the heat registers, or he would burrow under comforters. The poor guy. My little orange tabby, Barney, was found on the street at a few months old. We don't know what happened but he was absolutely terrified of the broom. The first time my mom brought it out he cowered and peed on himself in fear. After that one of us would always take Barney somewhere else to play and cuddle when mom needed to use a broom.

I always wished I could somehow erase those bad memories from them....

I forgot about my Angel Lola....she was found at a day or two old with her birth "goo" still sort of there and barely breathing...I wonder of her mom knew she was FeLV+ and left her or if something more grisly happened that left her abandoned there.

But as far as I know, Raphael was the only one who was conclusively "owned", although the people who kept Leo around DID have him neutered, unless he came to them that way. I also don't know if he was indoor/outdoor or just outdoor, since the the resided: ________ is still blank on his info sheet. I DO know from that sheet that he is good with other cats and dogs, so maybe these people had multiple outside cats? And the reason for surrender said "Not time for- moved, picked up by ACS", so who even KNOWS what that means. My guess is that they found the people and they said the ACS could take him. He's definitely not a lap cat or a lover (to anyone but me).

I can honestly say that I never really thought about it, I guess because i like to think that their old lives really don't matter, they're with me know and I'll never let anything happen to them again.... but I do wonder how they contracted FeLV. I gat Sapphire from a shelter in Michigan, and Simon (an obviously purebred Siamese) was found wondering in the woods

Well lets see hope no one is offended I will put both cats and dogs..

Nikko was picked out of his litter by my Mom 11 years before I was born so no ??s there

Murffy was a farm cat and after not potty training in two years was returned to that life( I was 3 ish) , last we heard she was so happy with her new family as my grandma placed her

Toby was a gsd whom mom rescued from the pound he was about a year old so she does wonder ... regretabley a housesitter let him out and he tore after Nikko he met a sad end when I was 3.5

Peggy my baby for nearly 17 yrs ...she was part of a litter the owners were going to put down she was like 8 -10 weeks when Grandma saved her and gave her to us

Joey was 8 weeks when he came to us .. gsd ... I knew and played with his mom to this day suspsion dad was a wolf as Mom s backyard backed to forest ... that is his only mystery

Kandie no questions as we knew her mom and littermates ...

Simon I wonder about ... I found what I thought was a stray kitten , but today would say feral he was 5-6 weeks and never tamed except toward me

Gigi was adopted at age 3.5 I wonder who abused who as she cowers to a hand on her head ... wonder if she ate well since she demands I stay with her..

Zoey was a feral who luckily landed with her pregnacy at a local shelter where they socialized her to humans ... I got her at about 8 months ... I do wonder

Luna i do sometimes wonder. My boyfriend's family found her at a county fair. A friend of his nephews originally wanted her and at first the mom said it was OK. Then as they were leaving for the day, his nephew and mom saw the mother pitch poor little Luna into a garbage can on the way out. So they picked her up and brought her back to their farm. She's always been sort of a loner. Plus she's very territorial when it comes to the other cats. I just associate that with her having to survive on her own for a bit.

Our new cat whitey is just a lover. I think its more personality than his background though. He amazingly adapted well to his new environment this weekend.

Patches and Beauty were just mere kittens before my boyfriend got them. So I don't think they had much history before.

I often wonder about what kind of life Ailey had before she foud me. She was so sweet(still is) when i found her but she was out in the country makes me wonder if she was dropped off (i hate that) or just lost. what kind of family did she have does she have brothers and sisters. i guess the same questions that a human would ask if they found out they had been adopted.

That story about Luna just breaks my heart. Why would you say you wanted it and then throw it in the garbage?????

I never thought about it, but another cat I know is terrified of the broom. He was in the shelter always though and then with his forever home, so I'm not sure why he's scared of it

I just thought of another thing... there is a ***pet store right near where we found her. The kind that sells puppy/kitty mill sort of pets... I wonder if she escaped from there? That would be soo cool. Well, that she escaped, not that she is from a mill...

I forgot to mention my bridge kitty, Willy. He was four months old when I adopted him at a pet store. I always wondered who could have given up such a sweet, affectionate, playful kitten. Their loss was my gain, though.

ALl these stories are so heart warming and such testimony to the love within us. My husband who can be pretty cynical about spiritual matters said to me while i was reading these stories and looking at Abi asleep in my lap: " Who can say sweet litle animals dont have souls and feelings and all the things that humans have inside?" It's quite amazing the perspective one gets when one saves a being from misery. and they misery they save us from by loving us back.

Rocky is the one I know the most about b/c he was a shelter kitty. His mom was a dilute calico with similar tux pattern, and he used to sleep with the little girl at his foster home. I wish I knew what his sibs looked like. His mom's owners apparently couldn't afford to take care of the cat and her litter, but were getting her back after she was spayed.

Zakk's life until 6 months old is sorta a mystery. I know that he lived with a young woman, her roomate and the girl had a small child, and they got evicted. They left Zakk in the apartment, and my co-worker, who was the landlord found him and fed him as he hadn't been fed. Zakk always appreciates his food and has to eat as soon as the food gets opened up- I don't think he was fed that regularly. He was in my coworkers basement for awhile. We think he may have been abused, not sure b/c he can be aggresive and sometimes doesn't like to be touched, but can be a love at other times.Don't know anything about his parentage. I do know that worcester has a quite a few black and white kitties, so I think he is Worcester bred! He meows with a mass accent.

The mystery of Cookie and Suzie is how they ended up living in the bushes outside of my friend's condo. We don't know if they were dumped or if their mother was feral or what. We don't even know if there were more kittens in the litter. I do know they were about 12-13 weeks old when captured, and they had been spotted around the condo for about 3 weeks and had been fed by the neighbors. We did see a calico kitty that wasn't very friendly or approachable wondering around that she said she had never seen. Thankfully we trapped them before it got cold, and I am positive they are brother and sister. (same age, circumstances, and same tabby pattern). What is weird is that they have such different personalities. Cookie is very friendly and fearless, Suzie is scared of her shadow!

We got Carly about a year ago and the rescue group said she was about 3 years old. They didn't know much about her because they took her from a shelter where she was on the euthanasia list. We met up with her at the local PetsMart. It wasn't until we got her home that I noticed that she didn't move her tail. We had the vet take some baseline x-rays and it turned out that her back leg had been broken when she was younger and had healed very well even though it hadn't been treated. Yet, she is the sweetest most cuddly cat. She even approaches our other cats in such a friendly way.

So how did she get injured? and who raised her to be such a love bug? I'm just glad we have her now.

Lucy was born at our vet's. Her mother showed up where one of the vet techs lived; she was close to giving birth. He brought her to the vet and the kittens were born there. They spent the first 8 weeks in the vet's office. I do wonder about her momma's life though.

I learned about Jamie and his littermates about an hour after they were all born, since a student's mother was fostering their mother. The young woman, whom I hadn't connected with her mother, who is a member of the same rescue group, because they have different last names, came in late and gushed about watching the kittens' birth. I rather spontaneously said I'd take one or two (and informed my husband later that evening), so I followed the litter's progress from day one. I got almost daily progress reports and baby photos, and was able to visit them once they were running around.
It was a really new experience for me, because we'd always had adult cats who were adopted from shelters, or had just turned up on our doorstep. Ditto most, but not all, of the dogs we've had.

I found Scarlett, Muddy and Koko the day they were born. Sage and Dakota were found by a friend in her barn the day they were born. All of the others were born somewhere on my property and I found them all by the time they were about 5 weeks old.

Stumpy is the biggest mystery: he was living in my storm cellar when I found him. Never saw a cat go in and out of there at all and one day I hear a kitten wailing inside. I go inside and see this little red fluff scamper under some boxes that were down there. I scoop him up and find his tail chopped off (and still bleeding). Of course he had to come inside and get treatment from the vet. Never found out for sure who the mom was and where his other litter mates went to. He was too small to have made it in there on his own - we had to bottle feed him for a couple of days before we could wean him so we're guessing him to be about 5 weeks old when we found him.

Ohhh. What had happened to his poor tail!!!
I just wish I could speak cat for just a couple hours so I could ask her. She seemed to know that she was finally being taken care of, and settled in within 2 days, and became really quickly attached. It's very mysterious.