Belle and her brother Beau arrived at our feeding station in the spring. My family and I had moved into our house, which was in a neighborhood overrun with feral and stray cats. With help from neighbors and a low-cost spay/neuter clinic, we managed to fix all the cats. We found homes for most of the tame ones and took in a few. We set up feeding stations and shelters for the ferals.
Belle and Beau stood out in our neighborhood, which had been overrun with gray tabbies. They had long black-and-white fur. Beau was larger than Belle but was still a small cat. Belle was tiny, a little bean. They were both masked cats, with black fur around their eyes and a white line between them. Beau’s white line was distinctive; it was crooked like a lightning bolt.
They were both beautiful cats but in rough shape. They had cuts on their faces, their ribs showed, and they were filthy. They were also feral, which means they had grown up outdoors without ever having contact with people.
Belle and Beau became regulars at our feeding station. They were nearly full-grown. Cats begin breeding young and breed super quickly. If Belle and Beau weren’t fixed soon, we’d have feral black-and-white kittens everywhere. A friend helped me trap them both on the same day and take them to the spay/neuter clinic. Once they had recovered from the anesthesia, I released them back into our yard.
A few months after Beau was neutered, he became friendlier. He let me pet him a few times and tried to run into our house when we opened the front door. Not Belle. She kept her distance, bolting whenever I took a step toward her.
Belle and Beau survived a brutal winter in our yard, huddling together in a cat shelter we had made for them out of a plastic tub, Styrofoam, and straw. We put heated food and water bowls and a litter box outside their shelter. This way, they wouldn’t have to spend much time exposed to the frigid temperatures and biting wind.
Beau disappeared that spring. I searched for him everywhere, describing the lightning bolt on his forehead to neighbors and passersby, but no one had seen him. I found a deceased black-and-white cat that had been hit by a car, but it wasn’t Beau.
Beau’s disappearance left Belle on her own. He had been her rock, her protector. Without him, Belle’s life became much harder. She was small and timid, with no aggression in her whatsoever. The other ferals pushed her around, swatting at her to keep her away from the food bowls and cat shelters. They cut up her pretty face.
Belle relocated to our front porch, where she slept on a wicker loveseat. To keep her from being bullied, I started feeding her on the porch. She eventually let me walk by her without running away as long as I didn’t try to touch her. She’d go into a deep sleep and snore, her dirty white paws hanging off the edge of the cushion.
Cats are hunters—I know this. My father loved cats because they hunt for sport, like he did. Belle had plenty of food, but she still hunted small animals, leaving dead baby birds, bunnies, and chipmunks on our front porch. It was sickening, but I didn’t want to scare her, so I talked to her sweetly as I picked up the carcasses and threw them away.
But the dead rabbit really freaked me out. It was nearly as big as she was. And—prepare yourself—she had decapitated it, leaving its head on our doormat and its body a few feet away. Distressed, I called my grown son and told him about the rabbit. “Do you want me to get rid of it for you?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “Mothers are supposed to protect their young.” He laughed and drove to our house anyway, burying the poor rabbit and lecturing Belle about her anger issues.
When it began to get cold in the fall, Belle tried to get into the same cat shelter that she had shared with Beau, but the ferals chased her away. I made another cat shelter and put it on the front porch for her, but the other cats took that one, too. I worried that she was going to run away and freeze to death.
I trapped her a second time, but this time I took her to the vet to get her tested for diseases that could be transmitted to our indoor cats. She wasn’t sick, so I set her up in a spare room in our house. This made her feel safe and gave our other cats a chance to get used to her scent, so they’d be less likely to attack her when we let her out.
Living in the spare room significantly improved Belle’s life. She could finally sleep soundly without worrying about predators, other cats, cars, and harmful human beings. But she was still terrified of me and darted under furniture whenever I came into her room. She literally tried to crawl up a wall once when I came close to her. I thought she was going to be a house feral, a feral cat that lives inside a home.
But Belle absolutely loved living indoors and wanted to be like our other cats. They were also rescues, but, unlike the ferals outside, they were kind to her. She began letting them groom her and playing with them when they ran up and down the stairs chasing balls.
In time, our little bean became a comfort queen. Her favorite sleeping place was our bed, where her little body sank into our thick comforter. She warmed herself by snuggling with the other cats and, eventually, with me.
Now, Belle circles my feet for attention like the other cats and lets me pet her. She enjoys back scratches but runs away if I move my hand toward her face. I can pick her up but only if I approach her from behind and she doesn’t see it coming. Despite her shortcomings, she’s adjusted better than I could’ve ever imagined.
About a year after I took in Belle, I looked out a window and saw Beau sitting at the end of our driveway. It was morning, and I ran outside barefoot in my robe like a crazy woman, waving my arms and calling out to him. He didn’t come to me. He turned and calmly walked away instead.
Beau looked good. He had grown large and was chubby. His fur was shiny, and his lightning bolt and boots were bright white. He was wearing a blue collar with what looked like an ID tag. Beau had found a home.
He must have escaped that morning and returned home because I never saw him again. I often wonder what made him come back to our house that day. It wasn’t hunger because he didn’t even go near the food bowls. Maybe he came back to see Belle. Maybe me, too.
I wish I could’ve told him that his beloved sister was safe inside our home, that her story also had a happy ending. She was living the life of a feline queen, napping on a heated throw and sunning herself on the side porch that we had turned into a catio.
Belle the bunny slayer no longer hunts, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She traded in her outdoor life for a much better one, with a little help from some friends.