Maverick Cats: Encounters With Feral Cats (Expanded and Updated)

To add to Ellen's wonderful work, I grew up in a town of about 15,000 people. Feral cats were everywhere. They were as natural as the birds and the bees. Nobody worried about them, and very seldom did one get hit by a car. One night, I turned on my porch light and looked out on my front lawn and there were 34 cats of every color, sitting like gentlemen, just hoping my female cat would pick one of them to be her mate. And another time my Dad came home one night from having a few drinks with his buddies, and came in through the back door. He flipped on the light and to his shock were six cats sitting in the chairs at our kitchen table. He thought 'I must have drank one to many.' He turned off the light and then turned it on again. They were still there. They were having a meeting with our black cat Emmaline. He politely showed them the door. Our house cats were both tame and wild, you might say. They truly ate mice and birds..They ate lizards all the time, but not the tails. Certain beetles and other bugs were delicious to them, especially water beetles. We had lots of feral cats in the bushes and woods around our town. I encountered many of them. Even though they were completely wild they were fat and beautiful. The hunting was good. Today I live in the big city of Bakersfield, California and some people complain about them and catch them and take them to the dogpound where they are put to death very quickly. People don't adopt them as readily as they do dogs. I want to scream as I was raised around them, in a town where they were not bothered, to just leave them alone. They may not have a home, but they are not homeless as the world is their home! They are natural survivalists. I have seen it first hand. They are amazing. They really hunt at night because they can see the rodents and the bugs moving at night. I pray for the return to sanity among the dogooders who think they know best for cats. Cats know what is best for them and they want to be allowed to be. Another story, my Mother would leave the bathroom window open enough so Emmaline could come and go. One day she was at a yardsale at the end of the street. She saw Emmaline there and when she started to leave, she picked Emmaline up to take her home. The woman who was having the yardsale said "Where are you taking my cat?" My Mom said "Your cat! This is Emmaline and I've had her since she was a baby!" Come to find out that lady thought she was her cat because she came down there to see her everyday. After they got over the shock of that, they decided to just share her. What else could they do? Cats are truly gifts to observe and enjoy. They are independent creatures and have as much a right to life as we do. I long for the Kingdom Jesus said he would bring to this earth someday, where sickness and death will not be, nor bad people that so readily put to death our human and animal friends, because they can't think of a better way. If the better way int

I found this in a Bennington, VT bookstore after my wife Andi pointed it out and bought it right away based on a warm description of how loving a cat could be, even moments after killing and gutting a grouse. Berkeley does a wonderful job of showing that duality of cats, of how at once they're incredibly close to us they are as well as being close to natural hunting machines. Warmly written, funny and touching, she also fills out the book with very well-researched scientific info on feral cats, and cat populations. A must-read if you're a cat person and owner.

This book is out of print and copyrighted 1987, but it's the only book I found with information regarding a feral cat colony. The author's experiences with the feral cats living around her Vermont home are a delightful insight into the person/cat relationship, and her interest, curiosity, and research regarding the realities of feral cat colonies is incredibly useful to me, as a lay person is just starting to trap, spay/neuter, and return strays and ferals in the Los Angeles area. A must-read!

I was hooked! I love cats, and all other felines for that matter, but fiction is more my range. This, however, is a great book! I LOVED IT!!! A must read! Yay! Heheh!