Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on January 4, 2018.

Never Love a Feral Cat:  A Tale of Compassion and Coexistence is a new book by Alwyn Moss, a past Floyd County resident, first teacher at Blue Mountain School and widely published writer.  Published by Archway Publishing, the book is a memoir that focuses on the discovery of a feral cat colony at the New River Valley retirement community where Moss lives. It documents the work she and others have done to humanely address the problem of homeless cats.

Moss describes her upbringing in Chapter One: In Honor of Wildness:  “There was only one tree on the block where I grew up, in the upper regions of New York City known as Washington Heights. As a child, my feet believed concrete was the natural surface of the planet. Buses, streetcars, subways, and walking were the normal ways to get anywhere. My neighbors’ little white Pomeranian dog, on a leash and sprayed with perfume, was my closest animal acquaintance until I got to kindergarten…”

Soon, she began visiting the Central Park Zoo and was fascinated by the animals, which she began writing about.  Later in life, she had a job working to protect endangered species with the Fauna Preservation Society at the London Zoo.  With a background in anthropology studies, Moss was chosen to write a biography of acclaimed anthropologist Dr. Margaret Mead, Shaping a New World.

Never Love a Feral Cat combines Moss’s skills in research with her love of nature and her concern for the tragic increase of extinction of established animal species.  She presents historical content about cats and statistical documentation, along with personal, and sometimes intimate, storytelling.

She writes, “On a rainy night in one of the early spring months of my first year at Over the Rainbow (note: the name she assigned to the retirement community), I noticed a small, shadowy figure emerge from under a parked car and follow me to my building.” As she turned toward the figure, it skittered away, but soon reappeared under a bush.

“Moving farther back under the bush, it cried softly to me. What did it want? To come inside? That I knew I could not do without getting in trouble…”  Eventually, Moss gave the scrawny, hungry cat a saucer of food, which it devoured in seconds.   “The saucer was empty but the cat remained, and to my dismay another cat appeared next to it – one with the same markings …”

That was Moss’s introduction to the feral cats living on the retirement community land, which not long ago was thickly forested, and still retains undeveloped acreage with small ponds and streams.  She wrote that there were “some thirty to forty homeless cats” and some of them met the criteria of true ferality: free ranging cats, domestic cats or descendants of domestic cats living on their own in the wild.

“An estimated eighty-two million feral cats are now part of the urban, suburban and semi-rural areas in the U.S. alone. This is about the same number as what we term “pet” cats. This relationship is not only due to cats’ natural fertility, but also to the lack of human responsibility to have their cats fixed and take proper care of them,” Moss reports. More cats are euthanized than any other animal species.

With the help of a local animal organization and kind veterinarians, Moss and others have taken a humane approach to reducing the feral cat population by stewarding, fostering and using the Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR).   She describes the work of TNR as “the unpaid, mostly invisible, frequently exhausting labor of keeping communities of abandoned and homeless cats alive and spayed or neutered.”

After trapping and neutering, the cats are returned to the wild to live out the lives they were given.  Moss writes, “The ferals I was coming to observe amazed me in the way they related to each other and their situation with dignity – the way they groomed each other, shared whatever food they might find or be given and kept themselves clean.”

Moss refers to caring for feral cats as a “chosen path” that has added new life to her experience of older age.  She describes the experience as “difficult, but meaningful and helpful in my becoming more patient, open, curious, grateful and aware of how great the struggle for life and evolution is.”

“I have been honored to know and work with people in their eighties and nineties who, despite handicaps or the discomforts and limitations of age, persisted like the Postal Service in cold, wind, rain and heat, making their appointed rounds and bringing food and water to the eagerly awaiting cats.”

As Moss and others interacted with them, the cats became gentler and relationships were formed.   “As I came to know one mellow, softly furred orange-and-white cat, his gentleness and intelligence gradually seemed to predestine a memorable friendship. He likely knew this before I did. He was the first one of his group that I touched with no fear.  He would sit near me, looking into my face with his green-blue eyes, as if confused by the contact, yet pleased.”

“The cat is an amazing companion. No two cats I have ever known are alike,” Moss writes. The book contains a cast of cat characters with memorable personalities, stories and names – Latte, Gratitude, Oreo, Grumpy, Mama Cat.  In the final chapter, Never Love a Feral Cat, the title of the book becomes clear, as Moss writes of the sadness of outliving and burying so many cat friends over the years, particularly those few that “became mine,” like Peter Pet Pet, the softly furred orange-and-white previously mentioned cat, who became an indoor/outdoor cat and who graces the cover of Moss’s book.

“As far as I could tell, this cat knew that I was central it his life and had been since the moment when he jumped onto my lap while I sat on the couch. No other cat of feral background that I knew of had ever done this.  It was as if he made a leap of faith to accept me.”

Readers will attentively follow Moss’s tough decision to have Peter Pet Pet euthanized, after saving so many cats from that fate, but Pet Pet was dying. “I had tried to reassure him by gentle touch through the entire procedure, and was only able to do so with the help of the kindness of the assistants, with deep breathing, and with faith and trust that we can be brave and beautiful and in togetherness, and that we can move on.”

“Why would I do this? Cats, and feral cats, are hardly an endangered species,” Moss questions. “As with the reason mountain climbers sometimes give for their intense commitment, mine is somewhat the same – because they are here. And my reason is helping the local – what is in front of my eyes and in need – because I see and have always resonated with the magnificence of the feline creation. Because they can suffer and are suffering and have fewer voices to speak for them.”  – Colleen Redman

Note: Moss’s book is available for purchase in Floyd at noteBooks and The Harvest Moon and on Amazon.com HERE.