30. The Real Gray Kitty

If you are familiar with The Adventures of Gray Kitty, the real Gray Kitty has a special announcement to make. His Mom and Dad are giving up App development. No more story Apps.

It’s a long story, but in a nutshell, both of us would rather do other things with our spare time. Martin would rather be working in the garden or fixing up our old house. I would rather read and write about stuff on this blog.

Future Gray kitty news will involve the real Gray kitty and his litter mate  Brownie, and I’ll write about them here.

The above photo is the first one we took after Christmas of Gray living his new life as an indoor kitty. At 5 1/2, he’s still mostly feral, unlike his fully rehabilitated litter mate, and he didn’t seem to be living a happy life outdoors. One time a rodent bit straight through his ear. Another time his tail had an open wound and we couldn’t catch him to get it treated. The crows enjoyed ganging up on a telephone wire to screech at him and he looked intimidated. He is scared of his own shadow and seemed to mostly be running away from people and other animals to find a safe place to hide. We had to stand by to keep raccoons and other ferals away while he bolted down food once or twice a day.

Vacations were really hard because we had to plan several days in advance to catch him. He is wise to all of our tricks.

We did manage to catch him before our trip in December. Spending two weeks in the kitty motel seemed to calm his scaredy cat behavior a bit, so we decided to try bringing him inside.

At first, he spent all of his time in what we have come to call his hovel. This is a futon couch in our downstairs TV room that we lined with plastic, then covered with a flannel sheet. We put his soft bed cushion on the couch, then draped a flannel top sheet from the couch back down over the cushy cushion and tucked it under the couch so that he’s got a little tent. That’s where he stayed for days, on his cushion inside the tent. I would show you a photo but that room is messy right now.

Then, a new pattern developed, a pattern of playing, from 2am to about 6am. Toy mice get tossed in the air, slammed around, shoved under doors and pawed back out. There is much thundering of feet as kitties play together. Bodies thud as kitties wrestle. Brownie hisses. He’s getting usurped as Top Cat. Gray is a little larger and feistier with Brownie now that he’s living indoors.

As a consolation, we’ve let Brownie sleep in our bed. Even though this means legs being pinned down by 14 lbs of kitty. Usually Martin’s legs.

During the day, Brownie goes outside to play and Gray returns to his hovel. Sometimes, when Gray is feeling super brave, he runs upstairs and crawls under the comforter on our bed for a nap.

that mound in the middle is a kitty

Gray seems happier. We can tell because when he was outside his tail was always slack between his legs. Never switching. Unless he was wrestling on the front tile patio with Brownie. Only then. Now his tail switches when he’s playing or when I bug him in his hovel. I pull back the sheet and start petting him and his tail switches and then he presents his very round tummy for rubs. He wants to wrestle but he knows I will go away if he tries to bite or grab my hands so he concentrates very hard on controlling himself.

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