Post Five

So, what I should explain in further detail is: why. Why I have chosen Alley Cat Allies to blog for for one of my blogs (I'm also blogging over at Blogging For Hadley). Why I love spending all of my time with feral cats. Why this is so important to me.

I knew nothing about feral cats as, unfortunately, most people do. All I knew was that my fiance and I had two beautiful cats who decided they wanted to come to our patio and check things out. We fed them and gave them water and they became used to this, always returning back. It got cold and so we put out boxes and blankets -- Fonzie, as seen above, loved his box and blanket. Rufus, "our" other feral cat, loved the patio furniture. Like most people, we did not know a difference between "stray" or "feral." In our own idealistic way, we thought Fonzie and Rufus could walk inside and be a part of our homes, or get adopted by a nice family.

A Google search lead us to Alley Cat Allies, and suddenly we understood. From that moment, feral cat care became so important to us. After all, we loved Fonzie and Rufus just like all of our inside cats. They were just as much a part of our family. Rufus has been gone for over a year. One day he just...left. We're unsure if this was colony relocation or he just decided to move on. It hurt, and it still hurts, but this is feral cat life. They aren't homeless, but they are free to roam. Fonzie, however, was FIV+. My other blog, Blogging For Hadley, is to benefit a foundation for FIV+ and FeLV+ cats. These diseases are obviously ones that have changed my life in the worst of ways.

Losing Fonzie was just as hard as losing a family member because he WAS part of our family. He was everything to us and the world stole him away in the cruelest of ways. Immunodeficiency viruses have defeated me twice but we can't give up...

And, this is why I decided to devote everything in me to feral cat care. Fonzie would want me to. He would want the world to treat feral cats as we did, and for them all to get to live life as nicely as he did. Caring properly for feral cats is so important and I won't stop until the world knows this.

Again, this is why I'm blogging on behalf of Alley Cat Allies: in memory of a handsome boy, Fonzie. He sleeps eternally under a beautiful tree at my parents lake house, next to his feline sister, Hadley. We miss him with our whole hearts every moment of the day. I do see him in the faces of all of the feral cats we care for and he is my reasoning for never, ever giving up.

Thank you to ACA for all you do to protect others like Fonzie. It is my pleasure to be raising money for such a great foundation.