Blackie was the 1st stray cat to show up on our deck. It took me a year to tame him. The Vet said it was a miracle.

Blackie was a much loved family pet for many years and has now been laid to rest.

In the late fall of Oct 2003 I notice a cat hanging around our deck.

He was a mostly black cat with some white patches.  I started feeding him. The cat was scared of its own shadow and us, but he came for food.

Three years passed and the cat was still a stranger. There was no getting close to him. Bill built him a deck house and we sent away to the USA for a heated mattress. When the cat laid on the mattress the mattress would heat up to a cats temperature. Winter was coming  and I tempted him to come into the porch by leaving the door wide open.....talk about a good air exchanger. I still couldn't get within 10 feet of this cat. He did wander in the porch but he ate and scampered out.

In Jan of 2007 he became lathergic..did I spell that right? lol

He wasn't eating, he was sick. I said to Bill I can't stand it, you will have to shoot him. I don't want  him to suffer. He said, call the Vet. The Vet said if you can get him in here I can look at him. Now we have this cat we can't pick up or get near so Bill cut a piece of plywood and nailed it to the door of his house. This just tells you how sick we was as he didn't move. The deckhouse with cat inside went off to the Vet. I am getting ahead of my story, so I will add this now.  I should say the previous winter Ange, named him Frankie and that previous winter he also went missing for 3 weeks. I gave up and thought something must have happened to him...for 2 weeks I put food out but no cat, I gave up and at the end of the 3rd week there he was.

Once we got Frankie and the deckhouse to the Vet, Bill took the door off the deck house and he went wild. She threw a canvas bag over him and gave him a quieting needle, I needed one too but she didn't give me one. lol

He had crystals in his urine. He got a good checkup, his ears cleaned, a patch of oil slick cut off his back, etc...she doctored him..and then I asked if he is well enough to be neutered..she said he was. I stroked is head when he was laying on the table, he seemed to be comforted.

He was brought home sealed up in the deck house and he spent the night in his house in the garage. The next morning I am to give him pills..lol lol..here is a cat I can't touch or pick up. We let him out of the deck house in the kitchen and he went to his dish of food of which I had put the pill in and he ate about one mouth full and wanted out. He wasn't supposed to go out.......it was very cold. How do you keep a scared stray cat in the house when it is bouncing off the door and windows. We let him out hoping he would take up residence in his warm deck house. lol Like he is ever going to go back inside that house. He slept under a nearby cottage, wandered over for food...of which I now put out in the kitchen with 2 doors wide open to the outside weather. He did eat a bit ...a couple of times he laid by the wood stove as long as I was about 10 feet away. He ate very little. He wasn't getting his pills.

At the end of day 5 he ate, I closed the kitchen door as it was freezing inside. He went to the door and started to howl. I decided to pat the top of his head. It was instant love!!!!!!! He never left our laps for the next 3 days. He couldn't get enough of us. Instantly he became an inside cat. Getting him to travel in the car was another problem but finally he tolerated traveling. He traveled 16,000 klms with us this past  summer. What a cat!!! Frankie is a lover and everyone loves Frankie.