Meet Bluey, a lovely little lady. Bluey has an interesting story, both funny and sad. One day in October of last year (1996), my mom said she had heard what sounded like a kitten crying somewhere in the edge of the woods. She knew it wasn't one of Dusty's kittens, around 5 weeks old at the time, but she couldn't find where the sound was coming from. My son and daughter also heard it, and the next day a tiny blue gray kitten was spotted high up in a tree. It was crying its little heart out but was up too high for us to get to.
The next afternoon my mom saw the same kitten up in the big cedar in her side yard and called for me to come down and see if we could get it down, or at least get some food up to it. It didn't take me long to see that there was no way I could get to the kitten, but it was so scared and hungry that I decided to try to at least leave it some food. We put some kitten chow in an old hubcap and I tried to wedge it between the trunk and branch so it would stay there and the kitten could climb down and eat it. That didn't work, and by now the kitten was getting frantic at the prospect of food, but too scared to come down to me. My mom finally had the idea of putting a hot dog on a stick so I could hold it up high enough to reach the cat. The hot dog kept falling off the stick, but we did finally get about 1/4 of it down the kitten.
That evening at feeding time, hunger overcame fear and the kitten crept onto the carport and tried to steal some food. The resident cats weren't about to put up with that and hissed, spat and growled at the baby. There was only one food dish left that she hadn't tried, and she went for it. It was Fluffy's supper, but he quit eating, took a step or two back and sat and let the kitten eat every bit of his food. Maybe it's because of her early days of hunger, but Bluey is a gobblegut and would eat a full meal every hour on the hour if she had the chance.
For the next 2 days the kitten stayed on the carport, hiding under an old console radio. We left food for her, and after a few days she was tame enough to pet. I started calling her Bluey, which is kind of a silly name, but it stuck. We estimated her age to be around 7 weeks old, about 2 weeks older than Dusty's kittens. Even though she was still a baby too, she appointed herself as babysitter to Muffin, Spot, Little Joe and Eunice. It was funny to see her hovering over them, like a mother hen. When Dusty disappeared, Bluey seemed to adopt them, even though they were almost as big as she was. She allowed them to "nurse", even though she had no milk to give because she wasn't old enough to produce any! (she was only around 2 1/2 months old)
She's a very vocal cat, she "talks" a lot. My mom pointed out that with her facial markings she looks like a certain celebrity at SeaWorld, so we nicknamed her Shamu. Her favorite snack is bagels.
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