H is for Hungry Cat

Hungry Cat started to come to visit us at the end of one winter about three years ago.  He looked thin, hungry and bedraggled.  He would come quietly through the cat flap to steal food.  Any movement from us and he was away again. 

We started to put food down for him every day.  Now he comes regularly to be fed and if we are in the kitchen will rattle the cat flap to let us know he is waiting.  He won't be touched, and hisses angrily if we try, showing a set of pink gums and not very many teeth.  We can get very close to him now and move about without startling him, but it's very much on his terms and he will let us know if we take liberties.

At first he would eat absolutely anything  I put down.  Now he has definite preferences and if there is something in the bowl he feels is not up to the required standard he makes a great show of burying it.

Some days he will appear with mysterious wounds, scratches on his nose, fur scraped off one leg, a whole patch of fur torn from his back.  And I worry for days, having already decided that I will only attempt to trap him and take him to the vet if something really serious happens.  I fear that the distress of being captured would make him run away from us when we release him again and then where would he get his meals?

Through the summer I steadily fatten him up and he becomes a fit, big, sleek and relaxed cat.  He sleeps in the sun on a pile of bricks and won't move for the whole day.

We have had two bad winters and through that tough time, despite all the food I give him, he loses weight, his fur gets out of condition and he becomes tenser and stiffer in his bones.  I don't know how old he is, where he is from or where he sleeps.  He could stay with us, in a bed in the kitchen.  But he won't hear of it. 

He's a handsome, tough, independent spirited old cuss.