This family weren't cat people... until they found this shivering kitten hiding in their garbage
A family found this feral kitten alone, covered in maggots, and shivering beneath a garbage can in the rain. They quickly brought the little guy inside.
The man and his wife definitely weren't cat people, or pet people in general... but this little guy was just too cute to handle.
Meet Oscar!
“After a stormy Saturday August night, my family emerged the next morning to head to church amid yet more drizzling rain. I was locking up the house when my five year old shouted from her car seat that she heard a cat,” Oscar's dad shared on imgur.
“I shrugged this off as she is animal crazy and there are several neighborhood cats. Then I heard the shrill cry of a kitten in pain. I walked around the corner of the house to the source of the sound and saw nothing until he cried out again.”
“I rolled our waste container forward (pictured above, though there was no snow at the time, only mud) and underneath I found a small kitten about five weeks old. Terrified and feral, he hissed and weakly trotted into some brush a foot away, but I was able to grab him all the same. He offered little resistance other than hissing as he was starving and sick. I noticed that his back paws were badly infected and covered with dozens of maggots. I imagine his mother must have abandoned him after sensing his worsening condition. I carried him into the house.”
“My eldest daughter said that the night before we found him, she'd heard mewing outside her window during the storm. She also said she'd been praying for a pet. We promised nothing as we were generally a no-pets family.”
“We took the kitten to a vet the next day and received antibiotics for his infected paws. For the first week or so he just rested on a towel that we nested in a box, leaning out to gnaw at some soft food.”
“He started to warm up to us and seemed happier after a couple of days of antibiotics.” His paws soon began to heal and the little guy started moving around more and more.
“My wife and I had agreed from day one of our marriage that we were not pet people. We both have "pet allergies". We planned to give this kitten, whom we named Oscar (get it?), to a local shelter once he was done healing. Who were we kidding?”
“After a month or so, his eyes changed to an amber color and he became quite a playful little murder floof. His more feral attributes had disappeared as well, save for some hissing when startled. These days he doesn't hiss at all, he is completely tame and is even friendly to houseguests.”
He likes to stalk the fishies on TV.
“Aaaand this was the day I decided we were keeping him.”
“Once it was settled that we were keeping him, we got him chipped, vaccinated, and neutered. We resolved to keep him as an indoor cat. I got to work, building him an awesome cat condo from scratch, installing it into a wall that is eight feet high. It's the perfect refuge from small grabby children.”
“The kitty window is well used to murder toys and to spy on approaching hoomans.”
“Of our four children, he gets along with our eldest daughter the best, even though she did this to him.”
“He's been more patient with our kids than we are with them. I monitor the little ones closely when they are with him and constantly emphasize that he is not a toy, and to be gentle with him even when he wants to be rough. I think he considers my middle daughter to be a sibling... he likes to chase her around the house.”
“Christmas taught us how much Oscar loved trees and brush. Also, shiny dangly things.”
“He liked to attack people's ankles from under the tree skirt.”
“When the little kids are asleep, he likes to chill on the couch next to me. He often sleeps at our feet at night and bites them at dawn when he wants to go outside. Oscar is now both family and a good friend.”
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