Words of advice?

I am the crazy cat lady.

I have officially caught my second stray.

Now, I was 99.9% sure that the first kitten my husband and I caught was a real stray - not lost, not runaway - because I had seen her several times over the course of months and it turns out that she was only 12 weeks old when we gave her to a good home. Even if I'd found out that she belonged to someone else, we could have given her back because we know where she is.

Last night, Greg and I were sitting on the couch watching the Dog Whisperer and our white cat started making weird growly whiny noises. We looked out the window and there's this absolutely adorable tiny orange cat with medium fur, repeatedly rubbing up against the window as though asking for affection from our cat. Eevee, our cat, is a bit of a freak when it comes to her personal space and things outside, so she wasn't in an affection-giving mood, but it definitely broke my heart. Greg and I moved quick, we opened a can of tuna, threw it in a crate, and put the crate outside.

I was ironing my fabrics and Greg was poised to move to open the front door and shut the crate door and the first time he moved to do so, he inched along thinking that by moving slower, he would disturb the cat. But he took so long to even get to the front door knob that she lazily walked away before he had mentally prepared himself to step outside. I scolded him and gave him a little "when you see her go in to the crate, next time, you MOVE MOVE MOVE" speech, and he sat down poised and ready again. Within the hour we caught the little cat.

She was definitely freaked out and did some nifty zooming and banging around in the tiny crate, and took a little bath in tuna fish... but we took her inside and up to our bathroom and closed the door and let her be alone to calm down.

We cleaned out a litter box and got some food and water together.

We let her out of the little crate only to be treated to a fair imitation of a giant furry mexican jumping bean. I don't know what she was thinking but she wasn't even aiming for windows - she aimed for the faucets in the bathroom, jumping over and over and over again. Greg tried some "CHH" dog whisperer techniques... and she actually calmed down and huddled in the bath tub which was pretty cool. He moved slowly, and eventually she was letting him pet her head and back.

It was at this point that I realized I had the vague urge to actually use the bathroom... and it just felt wrong - like some sort of bad-taste welcome - to do so in front of the little terrified stray. So I held it, and decided we needed a new room for little urchin to occupy.

We have a little front office that had become a dumping ground and cordoned off area. I told Greg it would be no big deal! We'll just clear it out! Carry everything outta there and wipe stuff down... vacuume... and then we'll have our bathroom back!

We put the cat back in the crate and set to work. It took about 2 hours to clear out all the crap (or to shove it in drawers), wipe down all surfaces (I sneezed approximately 15 times), vacuume, and temporarily patch a hole in the wall. We set up a couple of lights and a little cat bed and took in the food, water and litter box.

Eventually we brought her in and to take these photos, Greg break apart the two crate parts so that she would come out. She freaked out a bit again, but eventually calmed down. Here are some pics:

"You can't see me"



"I can't see you"

We're going to contact our local vet and a couple of other places to try to see if she's someone's lost sweetheart. We'll try to get to know her over the next couple of days - try to give her a bath, and maybe take her to the vet ourselves. Or maybe we'll take her to a shelter. It breaks my heart that she might be put to sleep if we take her to a shelter, but I also know that if she doesn't get spade (or neutered, could be a boy) or taken off the streets then she'll just keep adding stray kittens to the world.

Very sad.

We will consider keeping her if she seems like she could be compatible with our cats.

Any other suggestions? I'm open.