Billy and Bing showed up the summer of 2008. We know they were born feral in the Spring of 2006, but people in the RV Park were always friendly to them. Someone up the road fed them from when they were little kitties, and had to leave the area for work - and asked us to look after them (of course first order of business was getting them neutered.
They were almost always together. On the rare occasion they weren't, they showed up here at the same time, ran at each other, headbumped, rubbed all over each other, and wrapped their tails around each other, walking together.
They were friendly to us so fast - they deserved to be living inside, the cushy life! We tried SO HARD for MONTHS to get them adopted out together. It was getting cold, and Gary was starting to freak out. Finally, the local vet referred someone to us. She's a friend of the owner of the practice, and had recently lost her kitty friend of 18 years.
We felt we had no choice.
We couldn't do it. In advance of the first freezing rain/"winter" storm that was pending, we got him to the vet to go through "quarantine" (Tuxedo has a compromised immune system, and in the RV we have no way to separate them). Turns out he had giardia - so we very much doubt he would have made it through the winter.
He wasn't so nervous the first few days... but he was SO cat friendly, he tried to headbump our crew - and they hissed at him, or bopped him, or looked at him like he was an alien. It was breaking our hearts. He cried for Bing. And he talked about everything! So our boy - who seemed comfortable at first - became nervous.
So I started headbumping him, and "petting" him with my head. It took him three months to get his purr going....and now he purrs almost as much as Flowerbelle does.
But since having adopted Chumley... he really has a kitty friend now. Chum will groom him endlessly. As someone put it in another thread... two lost souls found each other.
Scrawny Billy:
Billy and Bing:
Billy inside. Is this a happy cat or what?
The cuddle-bunny who sleeps on my head:
Pet the tummy!
Billy being loved on by his new pal:
Billy - we can't imagine our lives without you! You're my little lover boy (well - at four pounds overweight, not so little anymore!), and I love that you love to be held like a baby - and I love that the tummy is not off-limits!