Thanks for sharing your story.
We bought a place out in the country in the early 70s. The woman we bought it from left all of her cats and didn't tell us. We found out when winter came. There was a black cat, who came to the porch. It took a year, but we coaxed her into the house. She disappeared into the basement and we didn't see her till Spring, just put food on the top step and shut the door. Spring came and shedashed out of the basement and bounced all over the kitchen till we opened the door and let her out. Didn't see her again until Fall, and we did the same thing. We named her Pilgrim She finally trusted us enough to have her kittens in the basement and left them with us. She would let us pet her in the house, but I tried once outside, and got a bad scratch. Back then, the drive to get the cats spayed and neutered was just starting up. People dumped cats at the roadside rest and they made their way to our house. We couldn't do much more than feed and shelter those, but as years went by, we got our newer pets spayed or neutered, and 100% inside. We moved to a larger town, and haven't seen this many strays in our neighborhood, ever.
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