ROTHENBURGER — Barney the wild cat pays price of neglect

COLUMN — New cat moved in a couple of weeks ago. His name is Barney.

Barney could be a girl cat for all I know — I haven’t been able to get close to him/her.

He hangs out in the hay barn and every time I get within about 20 feet he scrambles back behind some bales and hides. He’s a young cat, probably a few months old, an ordinary grey tabby with a bit of a busy tail.

Cats that nobody else wants move in all the time. Last year, we found one under the back porch. His back end was caked in pitch, so we cleaned him up and named him Pitch.

Pitch was a sweet little guy. He had a Humane Society tattoo and it was easy to trace his owner, who had probably dumped him. The Humane Society took him back and I know they found him a new home, hopefully a good one.

We would have kept Pitch, except Orange Kitty, another feline who ended up here by mistake, is a one-cat-per-household kind of cat.

What to do about Barney? He’s the first truly feral cat to move in, though we had a cat who left a litter in our woodpile one spring. Now that he’s getting two squares a day of high-quality kibble and a fresh bowl of water, Barney has no reason to leave. He probably thinks he hit the jackpot, if only that strange man would stop bothering him with that “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty” stuff.

Naturally, I consulted the expert on homeless cats, Michele Young, who advised me to trap Barney and make sure he’s neutered (or, as the case may be, spayed), vaccinated and put up for adoption or released.

(Michele has been involved with the human society for years, has written countless stories about animals in need, and hosts a blog called The Animal Reporter.)

I doubt there’s much demand for cats that would rather scratch your eyes out than make friends, so my thinking leans toward a catch-fix-release.

The last time I had a cat I actually asked for was back around 1971, I believe. Ever since then, there’s been a succession of lost cats, abandoned cats, stray cats, accidental cats and hand-me-down cats.

Because the cats always come to us before we have a chance to plan for names, they end up being called whatever comes easily to mind, based on colour, looks, names of people we know, circumstance or whim.

Thus we’ve had Snerd, Axel, Smokey, Little Fart, Scaredy Cat, Hiss, Number Three, Square Box, Pitch, Orange Kitty and so on.

It’s unlikely I’ll ever know Barney’s story, of course. Maybe he was somebody else’s barn cat, or was born feral and had to go looking for his own territory. Whichever, there’s a human to blame somewhere, and a background of neglect.

I’ve read that one cat and its offspring can produce 420,000 cats in seven years. The Kamloops and District Humane Society has captured hundreds of feral cats, getting them fixed through a program with local veterinarians.

If Barney and I can make friends, he might have a future. If we can’t, he’s welcome to stay in the hay shed, although, as Young pointed out, feral country cats are as likely as not to become a coyote’s dinner.

Barney deserves better, but whether he can survive whatever neglect or stupidity made him a homeless, lonely, friendless kitty remains to be seen.

Mel Rothenburger can be contacted at armchairmayor@gmail.com. He’s on Facebook/mrothenburger.7 and tweets @MelRothenburger.