Spike

Spike's a cat who's constantly underfoot and yet I only just met him the other day. Why? Because his very favorite place to be underfoot is in the med cage.

Leslie was kind enough to take a few minutes out of her busy evening meds schedule to tell me about her little "helper"...

"Spike was a feral that came from a colony of about a dozen feral cats being fed by an elderly gentleman. The man sold his property to a developer and they tore down the house to put up townhouses. We were called in to trap the cats by the salesperson for the townhouses who had seen them. Spike was very wild -- he almost killed me from inside his box when he was first in a cage and I tried to put in my hand to peek at him. This was about 4 years ago.

He used to live on top of the cages [where the feral cats often like to stay], but he eventually became very time. It did take a long time though. And he's decided he wants to be in the med cage.... all the time, if I'm there, so that I will give him food. His favorite is tuna, but he'll eat just about anything that I put on a plate. He has me totally trained. He sticks his claws in my leg just like Prince does as he tries to get my attention and I have to either grab him and push him out of the cage or give him something to eat."

"He's one of two cats who like to be in the med cage with me. The other's a pure white one called Lumi. They're both very fast. So if I throw them out, by the time I can close the door they're back in. They're really funny. What Spike does when he sees I'm going to try and move him, is he'll quickly run under the stool as if to say 'Look, look, I'm just going to go and lie down on my bed. You don't really want to throw me out of here. I won't bother you!' And so I leave him and go fix up the medicines, and the next thing I know, my leg's getting ripped."

It's funny how various cats will pick their favorite human sucker... Spike knows that a cute face like the one in the photo above will always win him Leslie's forgiveness for the odd overenthusiastic claw, while Lincoln, another med cage moocher, knows that Gaye never really means it when she says he's had all the tuna he's going to get.