His name is Bob. His dad’s name is Bob. His son’s name is Bob. My husband’s name is Bob. There’s too many Bob’s in this family and so, I call him SIL. That’s short for son-in-law and he of course, calls me MIL. It works. We never get mixed up with names.

My daughter Julie calls him “hot stuff.” I love that. 

My SIL loves cats. I mean, he REALLY loves cats. I think he loves most all animals but cats are at the top.

If I won the lottery, one of the very first things I’d do is buy him a wonderful place where he could foster every animal out roaming and needing help, and that would mean lots of cats. 

Let me tell you how much he loves cats.

If you were to open the trunk of his car, you wouldn’t see the usual trunk junk. You’d see bags of litter, boxes and boxes of canned cat food, bags and bags of dry cat food and big jugs of store bought water, NOT tap water, store bought. I don’t think you could fit a feather in that trunk for all the cat supplies.

Now let me tell you what he does with all those supplies.

He drives a truck. He drives it to San Francisco every day. (How tough is that? Seeing San Francisco every day!) The truck isn’t his, it belongs to the company he works for. He has to pick it up every day and that’s half-way to San Francisco. The trucks are all kept in a huge staging yard. It’s just like a big parking lot, a very big one. It’s located out in the nowhere off  the highway, heading west. It’s surrounded by miles of just fields. There’s absolutely nothing there but a big black-top parking lot with trucks parked all over, cars of the truck drivers, a small building that I guess is the office and hundreds of palettes stacked like mountains on top of each other. The palette mountains are spread all over the area. 

I guess it all started shortly after he began driving the truck and that’s been about 5 years. 

His day starts in the early morning hours like 3 or 4 a.m. It’s just about an hour’s drive from his house, but he leaves for work about 2 hours early and he gets home every afternoon about an hour later than he should.

Why?

Cats.

Feral cats.

Loads and loads of feral cats; big, little and every color combination. 

Over the years, my SIL has very patiently built up a trust with this huge feral cat community.  

Long before I saw this cat situation in person, he introduced me to his feline friends through photos and videos on his iPhone. And, they each have names. He names every cat and he remembers them; Mouser, Sunrise, Gray Paw, Stripe Squeak and King to name just a few.

You may not agree with what my SIL has done with these feral cats. You may even think it’s wrong. And you might be right BUT, it doesn’t matter. 

I tried. 

I tried to convince him of all of the reasons why they should be left to go out in the fields and find mice but I’m fairly certain that all he heard was, “blah, blah, blah” and my words just went blowin’ in the wind.

So you don’t think he’s just a loose cannon crazy cat person, there are  other truck drivers he has involved in this cat caper.  Plus, he has a few people from a rescue organization who trap feral cats, have them “fixed,”nurse them back to feeling feral and then return them to their stomping grounds free of reproductive worries. The rescue people come when SIL alerts them that he’s found a new litter of kittens. So far, they’ve helped 26 cats never have to worry about raising a family.

As I’ve already mentioned, this cat-stop is halfway between where we live and San Francisco 

SIL’s wife is my daughter Julie, and she loves animals too but her trunk is not full of cat supplies and she doesn’t drive an hour every day to check on the feral gang. However if they’re going into San Francisco for any reason, which they do pretty regular for sports games, well they’re gonna go right by the Feral Cat’s B & B and there WILL be a stop to check on them. That goes for anyone, family or friends who are headed for San Francisco in SIL’s car. A cat stop is mandatory. 

My cat curiosity finally got the best of me after rolling on the floor listening to Julie talk about her husband’s cat obsession.  I wanted to see this cat caper for myself.

On one of his days off, I told him we wanted to go with him to see this story in person. So he and Julie, my sweet husband Lobo, and myself took a little ride to the cat-yard. 

It was just as I described earlier, a huge parking area loaded with palettes on top of palettes making mountains.

SIL drove slowly to his first stop and we were instructed to keep it down so as not to scare his friends. 

He opened his door and stood beside the car. 

At first there was nothing and then, little furry heads began to appear, peeking out from everywhere. All those palettes had cats hiding in them.  It was like WHACK-A-MOLE, every opening had a cat.

After he saw them, SIL opened the trunk and began his routine. A litter box and 3 bowls were up against a sheltered area of the palettes. YES, a litter box for OUTSIDE feral cats!!! He filled their water bowl with fresh water and when they heard the kibble being poured into the food dishes, they came running like kids on a hot summer day when they hear the bells of the Good Humor Man. Big cats, little cats out from the palettes showing no fear of the human who greeted most of them by name. 

In the car, I could have easily begun to cry at what I was seeing. I was touched so deeply by that grown man standing amongst a crowd of feral cats, talking gently to them, while some were gobbling the food and drinking the water and others meowing up at him and rubbing  agaist his legs. Feral cats!

I didn’t get a chace to cry because I was in the back seat with Julie, and if you know anything about Julie, you know she’s hysterical. I was working at stifling my laughter.

That was stop number one. We repeated this scene about four more times and each time I watched as loads of feral kittens and cats ran out when they saw the cat man.

One stop was next to a huge truck. There were bowls underneath it. Julie let out a loud yell, “HEY, that’s all my Tupperware! I’ve been looking for those bowls!”

How do you not laugh at that, and how do you do it quietly?

The very last stop was emotional.

A few days earlier while pulling into the lot, SIL saw something on the side of the road that didn’t look like it belonged there. He went over to take a look and found 5 brand new baby kittens all huddled together. Brand new babies. 

Where was the mama? 

She was directly across the street. 

She wasn’t alive. 

She must have been hit by a vehicle.

SIL knew that mama cat, she was one of his friends. She had a name. He was alone but I know his heart broke and tears fell. He carried her over to an area under a tree, dug a hole and buried her.

He then carefully gathered those five little babies in his arms and carried them to his work truck. He took a box and blankets from his catmobile trunk and made the babies safe and comfortable. That day those five babies traveled with SIL to San Francisco and back. He made stops to check on them and fed them milk with a newborn animal feeding bottle. 

Sometime during the day, he called Julie and told her the story and could he please bring them home? 

As tough as she’d like to sound, bless her sweet soul….. she’s not. 

(This is my child who hid stray dogs in her bedroom closet when I said “NO!”)

She very reluctantly and with a few stipulations, agreed that yes, he could bring the five orphans home BUT NOT PERMANENTLY. 

On the day we were with him, his last stop was where he had buried  mama. He’d brought some small white fencing, a cross and some rocks and he made a lovely spot for “Mama Mufassa” under the big tree.

Her five babies? 

Julie’s spare bedroom was turned into a cat playhouse and they thrived. 

They were seen by the vet, and when old enough, spayed and neutered and received the necessay shots BUT each day Julie reminded SIL that they were NOT staying there.

It’s now one year later, Moksa, Skunks and Chunks live happily AND PERMANENTLY with Beanz and Tiny Baby, the two dogs of the house along with…..Julie and SIL! (Julie now refers to them as HER cats!) So much for NO! 

Lexi (Lexington) and Josie (Josephine) were adopted by Julie’s BFF Melissa and live the life of cat luxury. They joined two senior cat members of that household, Monte and Baxter. Melissa works from home and so do Lexi and Josie her two office assistants.They keep the keyboard warm and the top of the desk organized…..cat style.

I love the compassion that my SIL has for animals. I THINK he knows that he can’t save them all but that doesn’t stop him from trying. 

And Julie? She’ll always say NO but knock on her door with a stray and see what happens.

The term is lucky dog but in this case, these were five very lucky cats, along with an ever growing number who wait daily for my SIL and who I’m sure, is a legend in the feral cat world.