How one tiny kitten changed everything.
We always thought we were dog people.
We had a big piece of land, plenty of space, a meadow, and a forest just behind us. A dog seemed like the obvious choice.
We talked about it many times.
But somehow, we could never quite decide.
Then, during our first summer here, when there was still only one little house on the land, we happened to mention it to our neighbour.
A few days later, she called.
“I have a kitten.”
A little tomcat.
And just like that, without much planning at all, we said yes.
We went to pick him up and brought him home.
We were complete beginners when it came to cats, and somewhere in the confusion we misunderstood one rather important instruction.
We thought we were supposed to let him outside.
So we did.
The problem was that this tiny kitten had just arrived in a completely unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people.
And he disappeared.
Our first lesson in living with cats
We searched everywhere.
Around the house. Across the meadow. Towards the forest.
We called and called.
Nothing.
That evening, our neighbour came over to see how things were going.
When we told her what had happened, she explained what she had actually meant:
Let him out inside the house.
Oops.
By then, there wasn’t much we could do.
She told us to keep leaving food outside. If he was somewhere nearby, hungry enough, perhaps he would come back.
We had already given him a name.
Oliver.
So every day we put food outside.
And every morning, some of it was gone.
We had no idea who was eating it.
Oliver?
Another cat?
Something from the forest?
Days became weeks.
We kept calling for him, but we never saw him.
After almost two months, we started wondering whether there was any point in continuing.
And then, one evening…
There he was.
Standing outside our big window.
Scruffy. Hungry. A little wild.
But alive.
Oliver had come home.
Or perhaps that was the moment he decided this could become his home.
After almost two months of not knowing what had happened to him, suddenly we knew.
He had survived.
Now we just had to convince him that he could trust us.
Learning to trust
That didn’t happen overnight either.
Slowly, Oliver became less afraid of us.
And slowly, without us really noticing when it happened, the little cat we had accidentally released into the wilderness became part of our life.
Remember, we were supposed to be dog people.
Apparently, Oliver had other plans.
And then one day, he didn’t come alone.
He brought Mike.
We had no idea yet that Mike was about to change everything.
To be continued…
The cats who live here today
That first summer was only the beginning.
If you’d like to meet the cats who eventually became part of Six Blocks, you can find them in [The Cats Who Live Here →]