# Stray Cat - Or is it?



## Hello Kitty (Dec 7, 2004)

I think that a cat that's been living at my house for a while that I thought was a stray (he won't let me pick him up or catch him) is actually the baby of one of my other cats from a while ago. 
About 7 months ago my cat Miss Kitty (I had her spayed 2 months ago) had a litter of kittens in my laundry room. The laundry room isn't inside of my house, but it's through a door that's connected to my car garage at my house, and my cats sleep, eat and sometimes play in there, and during the day they roam around in the yard (the laundry room has a window that I leave open and the cats climb up in it to get in and out). Well, my parents and I saw my pregnant cat go into the laundry room and then we had to leave the house for something, and when we got back we saw that my cat had had kittens. Miss Kitty was so far back behind a wooden thing that we hang clothes on that we couldn't get close enough to see much except when we looked from afar. The first time that we looked Miss Kitty had only had 2 kittens, a yellow one and a gray and black one (it was clearly gray and black with no other colors on it). Well, a few days later she moved them to another spot and we discovered that she had had 4 kittens, 2 yellow, a gray and white one without a tail (Miss Kitty is a manx), and another gray one with mixed colors. I never really thought much about the kitten that I first saw being gray and black and not having mixed colors, until about 4 months later after all of the kittens had been given away except for the tailless one, Cricket, a female. One day I came out of the house and saw a gray cat that looked to be the exact same size as Cricket sitting in my garage. It was solid gray with beautiful black stripes on it's back. I just thought it was the neighbor's cat and figured it just came to get some food because the neighbors forgot to feed it or something, until I noticed throughout the month that the cat had been living at my house. Over the past couple of months it's continued to live at my house but it still won't let anyone touch it, even though it's allowed us to come a little closer over the months. It eats, plays, and sleeps with my other cats, and in any other case I'd just think that it was a stray that my cats had kind of "adopted," but I can't get it out of my head that it may be one of Miss Kitty's kittens that she possibly took away from the litter and was secretly feeding it somewhere away from the other cats. The kitten that she was nursing the day that they were born was clearly black and gray, with no orange mixed colors like the other grayish kitten had, and this one had a tail, unlike Cricket.
Do you think it's possible that this cat may be Miss Kitty's baby that just recently (about 3 months ago) came out from wherever it may have been? I just find it kind of odd that the cat is identical in size as my cat Cricket, and the whole thing with the black and gray kitten...I don't know. What do you think?


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## Hippyhart (Jul 4, 2004)

Are there any other female cats around that could've had kittens the same time Miss Kitty did, and they have the same father? I think usually the mother keeps all the kittens together when she is nursing, but I could be wrong. It doesn't make sense that she would move one out of sight with the others in one spot.


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## rosalie (Oct 9, 2003)

I agree with Katie..from what I know the mother won't feed a kitten separatedly from the others.
However it can be that the kitten got lost and they couldn't find each other then he grew up and came back to where food was. 
Hard to say if that is him though..it could be a half-sibling, different mothers, same father.
I've a couple like that that I thought were from the same litter but close up they are quite different.


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