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Rescuing a pet is the best way to get one, in my own opinion. But not all animals come from the various shelters and rescues. Such is the story of my cat, he was born a feral cat; a wild house cat. This is his story.

He wasn't supposed to stay. He was supposed to find a forever home like his siblings, a home that wasn't ours. Well, this is the story of Butterscotch Rebel Runt Watts.

It was fair week, the last week of July in 2006. I was 17, or as I liked to put it: three cats old. My first cat had died when I was two and my second cat had died four years ago. I now had a four-year-old cat named Lady Mischief Ann Watts, or Mischief for short. On the Monday of fair week, I saw a mother cat and four kittens walking along the edge of the field behind my house. They noticed the old metal pie pan with some dry cat food in it by the newly planted lilac bushes. The mother sniffed the pan and she started gobbling the food. The kittens followed suit quickly. I watched from the window and glanced at the clock on the VCR; it was 6:30am. Grabbing a pencil and a spiral notebook, I scribbled down descriptions of the cats. I wrote:

Mother, young (less than a year?), light grey with darker stripes
Kitten #1: orange (w/white?), runt? smallest
Kitten #2: grey w/ 4 white paws
Kitten #3: calico, black w/ mostly brown and orange spots, female?
Kitten #4: grey tiger, light colored belly

I'd been putting food out secretly for around nine or ten years by that time, I put food out for a neighbor's cat that was an indoor/outdoor cat to make sure it had food because its humans were gone a lot. But that had been over seven years ago because the husband had moved since the wife had died. He'd taken the cat with him, but I continued to put food out for the strays.
It took three days to get one kitten, the orange one, to let me get close. It was eating when I lunged at it to try to catch it, but it ran into the field and became lost to sight. I went back inside and grabbed Mischief's old cardboard carrier that we'd used to take her to the vet. I put it on the deck and went back inside to wait. About half an hour later, the kitten came back. I was ready. I went to the field slowly, talking soothingly as I walked. Again, I was able to get close before the kitten ran into the field. Thankfully, it was a soybean year: the farmer altered crops between corn and soybeans every other year. I grabbed the food pan and sprinkled some of the dry cat food onto the ground a few yards ahead of me and waited.

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