Bug

Bug is one of my very few unadoptables in the cat facility. I caught Bug at Ithaca College ummmmm....four years ago.

She was a sixteen week old kitten, and she was chewing a bug under a streetlight. I was stalking her with a net. She would stop to chew...glare at me...run off a bit...stop to chew...glare...run. I did net her, and I did lose her. I caught her a few days latter in a cage trap.

As much as she hates humans, she loves cats. She was successfully adopted by a wonderful IC professor who has adopted four other cats from me. Nancy figured Bug could just live in her fairly large house and associate with her other cats. But in a storm, a door blew open, and Bug ventured out in a very very nasty December. We trapped for weeks, and put up flyers.

I was pretty much giving up on her, when Nancy's housecleaners, who came by twice a month, were sitting at the kitchen table and idly read the flyer lying there. They looked up...and there was Bug, two lots away, sticking her head out from under a shed.

We set traps all around the neighbors house that night, and Nancy called me the next morning and held the phone up to a yowling Bug, safely confined in a trap. She was skinny, dehydrated, suffering from an upper respiratory...and purring.

PURRING!!!! I thought Bug had undergone a huge permanant transformation. She purred at the vets, purred in her cage the entire time she was confined for treatment...she was downright cute! However, as soon as she was released from her cage back into the cat room, she turned into the Sprite From Hell again.

Someday I may tuck her back into a cage to see if she turns into a purrer again, if confined away from other cats.

It was pretty awful lying warm in bed at night, with the wind absolutely howling, knowing she was out there for weeks. That first night she was safe, it was wonderful to sleep without nightmares. I empathize with anyone who has lost a cat (I have lost one other adoptee who was never found). But Bug is safe now, even though most of the time she hides under a towel when visitors arrive. Because she is perfectly happy with the other cats, she has a place here. So if you come to visit, and you see a lump under a towel, chances are pretty good it's Bug, waiting for you to leave.