Wildcat Billy has returned to life on the wild side.
He made his escape from the isolation room where we'd been keeping him while we tried, very, very slowly, to get to know him better.
But on the eighth day after we brought him to Catkin Willow in a live trap, he managed to push open one corner of a storm window and force himself to freedom.
The first we knew of it was when I took his breakfast in at 7:30 a.m. for my first blinking and sweet-talking session of the day. I could hardly believe it. The storm window, which we thought was securely latched and in any case must have taken quite some diligent pushing to work open, told the story.
Billy has been the personal project of Elizabeth O'Halloran for more than a year. That's when she began feeding the large complete Tom who roamed the ravine near her apartment.
At least twice a day, rain or shine, heat wave or freezing cold, Elizabeth made certain that Billy was fed. Although we think he has never been domesticated and is almost certainly wild, she was able to establish enough trust that once in a while Bill would allow her to touch his head before he'd lose his nerve and pull away.
But he came to know the sound of her voice and Elizabeth grew to love him, this brindle tabby, who would appear at the sound of her voice, favouring her with his catsong greeting.
But always she worried, worried if once and a while he didn't appear, worried when once he became ill and lost weight, worried when the harsh winter cold came.
"I tried to find someone who would help me to get him, help me trap him and try to domesticate him, but all the shelters seemed always to be full, and I was at my wits' end," says Elizabeth.
Then she heard of Catkin Willow.
And, although we had severe reservations about even trying to remove Billy from one area with which he was familiar and move him to another in the hope that we could tame him, we finally decided to try. We've had some success over the years in taming feral and occasionally wild cats and we hoped Billy would be one of our successes.
Now, we have to be content with occasional sightings. We're happy that Billy is at least staying nearby and he does drink at our fishpond and feed on the kibble we always leave out for him and one other stray who sometimes shows up.
Not the ending we wanted, but perhaps not so bad. Billy will always have a secure food supply at Catkin Willow. Looks like we have just started a wild offshoot to the Catkin Cats family tree.
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