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| Name: |
Baby
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Age: |
Nine years old
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| Gender: |
Female
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Kind: |
Cat
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| Home: |
San Diego, California, USA
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Baby
was a feral cat for the first year or so of her life, and she was
like a wild cat at the zoo for the second year; she lived in a cage
after having been captured and spayed, and she screamed and clawed and
bit anything that came within her reach. But gradually she came to see
the benefits of living with humans and calmed down during her third
year. I think she observed other cats in the house and the way they
enjoyed being petted. It was my best friend who captured her and
acclimatized her to being a pet, so I saw Baby on my occasional visits
and thought that she was very beautiful but too wild and vicious ever to
be a pet. But I saw that she was making a lot of progress during that
third year, and when my husband and I decided that we should have a cat,
Baby was the one I wanted, even though I expected to have to woo her for
months, if not years.
Baby, however, doted on me from the very first day. I'm not sure why,
unless I was the only vaguely familiar thing in her strange new
existence, but I'm very grateful for it. (It took a lot longer for her
to like my husband, and even now she makes it plain that he's only an
emergency backup human. At least she no longer hides under the furniture
and growls at him.) I think she would be on my lap 24/7 if she could be,
and believe me, I would like that, too! Fortunately, she's very tiny
(only six pounds, and that's a pound heavier than she was when I first
took her home), so she doesn't disturb my sleep when she lies across my
lap all night. My little Baby does a million smart and funny things,
but one of the things I'm most proud of is that she lets me brush her
teeth! I want to recommend this to all dog and cat owners, as it will
certainly make your pet more pleasant to be around, your pet will be
more comfortable, and it may very well lengthen your pet's life. If I
can do it with my formerly wild Baby, you can do it too!
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