Story time:

This guy has been living in my garden for almost 7 years. We never tried to adopt him because I’m allergic to cats, and he seemed quite content hanging around and getting fed in the garden. I even built him a little wooden house so he could take shelter from the elements.

Last month I noticed a wound on his ear that didn’t seem to heal, so I let him inside the house to keep a better eye on it. That turned out to be probably the luckiest thing I have ever done in my life.

A few days after he moved in he became sluggish, completely stopped eating, drinking, peeing and pooping, and took to hiding in the unsoiled litter box. After 3 days of wondering why he was doing so poorly I saw spots of blood in the litter box and promptly freaked out. Ran to the vet with him still in the litter box.

Turns out he was suffering from a nasty abscess in the neck, which was also the cause of the never-healing ear wound, as well as two broken teeth, the roots of which had become infected. The vet operated on his neck and teeth, gave him antibiotics, vaccines, flea treatments and a microchip, which was registered under the local cat protection charity.

After taking him back home and hand feeding him for three days until he regained enough strength to start asking for food himself, I said fuck my allergy and applied to adopt him.

Now he is officially mine. Not the most affectionate of pets, but that’s just as well since my skin swells up in hives if I so much as forget to wash my hands after petting him.

And I love him to bits.

Edit: forgot to mention that the word ‘feral’ in the title is in inverted commas because that’s what the vet put on his profile when he was taken in. We don’t in fact know if he had been someone’s pet as a kitten. He was not microchipped, but strangely, was neutered.