I fell behind in posting to this site this year, so there are no photos on the site of Hitchhiker, who was adopted today!
Hitchhiker showed up at Cathy’s farm in January. She thought he was just passing through, so she gave him the name Hitchhiker. He was raggedy, apparently feral tom cat with a bent ear and a scarred nose. But Hitch didn’t move on – he picked fights with one of her farm cats, and eventually, it got so bad that Cathy decided he had to go.
I didn’t believe Hitch was feral, so I said I would foster him, and 9 Lives took him in. Here’s what I posted in a fundraiser for him: “Now in a 9 Lives foster home, Hitchhiker has started to reveal his true colors. He was outgoing from the first. Even in a new place, in pain, worried about what these new humans might do to him – he still turned to them for help. Within hours Hitch was asking for head rubs. Coming from a hard life in survival mode, he turned out to be incredibly forgiving, with lots of love in his heart.”
He also turned out to be FIV+, full of worms, with cracked and infected teeth, itchy ears, and a skin infection. He was getting into fights because he was starving and wanted access to the food the other cat was guarding. The worms left him so hungry he was eating 12 to 15 ounces of wet food per day when he first came to us, and was still thin.
So our scar-faced boy was gradually brought back to health. He had become very close to me, and it really seemed like gratitude was a big part of it. Some cats seem to take what comes, without seeing it as the result of someone else’s efforts, but I swear Hitch knew I was the reason he was in a better place and healthier. He even started remembering how to play!
As always with my foster cats, I would give a lot to know his back story. He clearly had someone who cared about him and played with him. The vets thought he was about 5 years old, and that seems right to me, so how did he go from a loved pet to a trouble-maker on a strange farm? We’ll never know.
When he was listed for adoption on the 9 Lives site, what I wanted was for someone he could form a new bond with, a forever one. That’s where Delia saw him and fell in love. She drove from Milwaukee to meet him, and saw how appealing he was. Moreover, he really liked her! I knew she was the one. He left this morning for his new home, where I know he’ll be very happy.
