Zelda

This is Zelda Fitzgerald. Her mother, Mary, was allowed to breed freely and was kept as a semi-pet, living outdoors, occasionally fed. Her numerous litters of kittens were not socialized to humans and grew up semi-feral to feral. In October of 1999, a pregnant Mary and eight of her kittens from several previous litters of various ages, were trapped and brought to the animal shelter.

Three of the kittens appeared to be tameable and were sent out to a foster home. The remaining five kittens were not considered adoptable. One morning I came in to work and learned that these five were to be euthanized that day - had, in fact, already been dosed with a sedative to calm them for the trip to the vet. This was too much for me to stomach all at once, so I decided to add Zelda to my cat family.

Though these kittens had all been at the shelter for three weeks, I had little knowledge of them due to their wildness. Some of the kittens were younger than Zelda, and might have been better bets for taming, but I chose her for two reasons: her calico coloring indicated she was a female, and her temper displayed fear but no aggression. I hoped her age was about 5 months, guessing only by her size.

Once I brought Zelda home, her temporary living quarters were a cat cage in a secluded bedroom. I spent a week attempting to build the beginning of a friendship, with no results. Just as at the shelter, Zelda did nothing but crouch in a corner of her litterbox. (I'd never seen her standing in all of the time she'd been at the shelter. She would do a crouching slink when forced to move.)

By this time we suspected Zelda's age to be closer to eight months, based on her littermate who had been examined after being euthanized. Since there was a high possiblility Zelda could be pregnant, she was taken to the vet the next week for her spay and vaccinations. Luckily there was no pregnancy, and while she was under anaesthesia an examination of her teeth confirmed her age to be about eight months old.

It is generally accepted that feral kittens older than 12 weeks are not going to be easily tamed, if they can be tamed at all. Since Zelda was so much older than I'd hoped, I knew she wasn't going to become a loving pet any time soon, if ever. It was time to decide how to proceed with her taming.

By now almost two weeks had passed with Zelda in the cage in the secluded room. She displayed absolutely no progress, as expected. And any time I went into the room to visit Zelda, little miss Fellini would be outside, protesting the closed door. Zelda had passed her health exam and been vaccinated, so now Fellini was allowed entrance. And a small miracle occurred. Zelda saw Fellini, stood up and walked to the front of her cage!

Cats do much of their learning through observation. Since Zelda was not afraid of Fellini, the next step became that of allowing Zelda to watch Fellini interacting with me. The presence of another cat made all of the difference to Zelda. A few days later she was actually playing with feathers I waved near her. Still, she had no interest in being approached or touched by a human. Finally I decided to release Zelda into the house to live her life with the cats.

Zelda has been permitted to deal with the humans on her own terms since then. In January of 2001 she showed her first real progress, and now, March, she comes onto the table next to my chair every evening for 5 - 10 minutes of back scritching. I'm looking forward to the time she feels comfortable enough to climb on my lap...