How to Tame a Wild Kitten

I had seen the little stubby tailed tabby cat for a few weeks now. We had new neighbors, and I had just assumed she belonged to them. There are a lot of cats in this neighborhood, and our backyard is a playground to many of them. Thick raspberry bushes provided shelter from the summer heat and my fountain provided water; our cat door also provided many of them with easy access to snacks away from home, to my dismay.

I was washing dishes one afternoon when I saw the little cat emerge from the bushes with the most adorable kitten. It must have been about six weeks old, fat and fluffy. I went out and called to the mom, who had come up to me before. She came, a little cautiously, but the kitten kept its distance.

I went to our neighbors and asked if the cat and her kitten belonged to them. They said no, they had seen her around for a while, but she wasn't theirs. I remember telling my partner that night that I wanted to try to adopt both the mom and the kitten. He gave me a "look" but didn't say anything about it, taking it in.

As it turned out, my kitten-taming project was to be a healing process for me, because just two days after this exchange, my partner had a massive heart attack. He passed away while playing and swimming in a river with friends from work.

There was a lot to take care of after his passing, trips away for his son's wedding, a Celebration of Life to plan, and more. His sister and her husband came to stay with me and help. I would sit in my garden, overcome with the loss I had suffered, and then see the kitten playing around the tomato plants. She was the only thing that could make me smile for a long time. So once all the trips and plans and arrangements were taken care of, I decided to try to tame the kitten and bring her inside. I asked my sister-in-law to help me name her, and she chose Mckenzie - the name of the river my beloved had been in when he died.

Taming Mckenzie wasn't going to be easy - she was very wary of any loud noise. The mother was protective of her, and made it hard to get near her. I started by putting out canned cat food for both the mom and the kitten. Slowly, the kitten got used to my presence. I would lie on my stomach, halfway under the raspberry bushes, trying to tempt her to come nearer to me. Occasionally I would be able to touch her tail or her head, only to have her bolt away from me. I would play with her, using pieces of long grass, since she didn't seem to be able to figure out what that the cat toys I brought out to her were for. She only seemed to want to play with "natural" things - leaves, twigs, etc. Slowly I moved the cat food plate closer and closer to the house. Soon when I went outside, she started coming out from under the bushes to see me.

Trying to get the momma cat in the house wasn't going so well. I already had two cats, and she wasn't adapting to being around them very well. She'd come into the kitchen, but would fight with the other two. I realized that I wasn't going to be able to have her inside, and would just have to concentrate on the kitten.

I finally got Mckenzie to the point that she would come in the back door to eat her canned food. Every day I moved the plate a little farther into the house. She was wary of any movement and would streak out the door unless I sat very still. Finally, one day I had the cat food dish pretty far into the house and she was eating, and seemed calmer. I knew this was my chance, and slammed the back door closed with my foot.

Mckenzie panicked, and started running around looking for a way out. I was finally able to catch her and take her into the bathroom. I sat down and put her on my lap. She stuck her head under my arm, hiding - a habit she still has if she is scared or upset. From that night she lived in the house. Slowly she started to explore her new home. I knew she and her mom had been living on mice from the compost bins, so I bought her some fur mice to play with, and she would spend hours hunting them. About a month after she was inside, she brought me a real mouse she caught under the stove.

It took me weeks to be able to pick her up. For the first month she would run if I came near her, but after a while she began to enjoy being petted and would run up to me each morning, standing up on her hind legs to rub her head against my hand. She discovered that sleeping on the bed is more comfortable than sleeping on the floor, and now most mornings I wake to find her curled up next to my pillow.

Mckenzie was a true gift, that came to me at a devastating point in my life, and gave me a project to work on, and a companion whose antics still make me laugh. I'd never tamed a wild kitten before, and I'm glad that I decided to try.