OC came to live with us on June 24, 1998. He was another of the three cats we had fixed in June 95. A couple of months after we had trapped Lonee and Red, one of the neighbors told us the sad news that one of the remaining red cats had been hit by a car. The woman that did it stopped and went to his house, since the cat ran back into that area. They looked for him, but were unable to find him. When we didn't see OC anymore, we realized that he was the one that had been hit. We all thought that he had run off and died. Much to our amazement, he hadn't died. He was in our entry way a month or so later, very, very thin getting a drink of water from our fountain. He wasn't walking well at all. I would have loved to have taken him in right then, but hubby was dead set against it, since we already had two cats that were standoffish in the home (Red lived in the garage rafters for over a year).
A month or so ago, Brian was looking out of our front door and he saw OC sitting out front. With much melancholy in his voice, he said "I sure wish we could have trapped OC, I feel so badly for him". I said "we still can", but he didn't want to at the time.
Well, the lady that had been feeding the local cats (of which there are only two left, down from at least a dozen two years ago, and one of those has a home) is moving up in the world and out of our neighborhood. And she won't be able to feed these guys anymore. Brian said, "well, we can start feeding them again" which is absolutely out of the question. I didn't want them crossing the street to eat, which is the reason we stopped feeding them in the first place. After much begging on my part, he said that we can try to catch OC and take him into our home.
He's has only been here a little over 48 hours now, of course he is still hiding. He isn't so scared as he was, he isn't breathing as fast. (Check out his nose in his picture. He injured it trying to get out of the trap and then climbing the walls to get outside.) I was so afraid that he would re-injure himself from jumping on things and I can't really tell if he has or not.

I'll keep the updates in the diary.

As many of you probably know by now, OC escaped on July 4th, 1998. His own independence day. He's back out front and I'm not giving up. He belongs here and we will catch him.

April 11, 1999....OC hasn't shown any signs of wanting to be here. He comes over for meals and that's it. We've decided that he wouldn't be happy as an inside cat, which he made very clear. So, we will keep feeding him and if and when we move, will try to trap him again and bring him with us.