Tonight my neighbor and I rescued a cat who was crying piteously under
her back porch. It's a little black cat with a couple of white
markings. We got her into my house, and I isolated her in a big cage in
my guest room (the same cage where my three cats languish whilst
awaiting the arrival of the vet every fall) with food, water, litter,
and a towel bed on one of the cage shelves. The room is closed off, and
my cats are not being allowed in.

She (for some reason I think it's a she) is a very sweet cat, obviously
someone's pet, loves to be held, loves to have her cheeks and throat
stroked, purrs incessantly. Part of that may be because this is
possibly the coldest night of the year (going to go well below zero),
and she'd been crying all day before my neighbor called me and we
"rescued" her. All we had to do was pick the sweet girl up! If my
neighbor hadn't heard her and had her heartstrings tugged and then
called me, the little darling probably wouldn't have made it through the
night.

The funny thing is that this cat very strongly resembles one of the
ferals my neighbor and I both feed, so we were really confused when she
came to us and let my neighbor pick her up. Despite the different
behavior, the question was clinched when I realized she had no tipped
ear. "Our" ferals were all trapped, spay/neutered, and released with
tipped ears.

So, now we need to find her home -- either her old home or a new forever
home. She is eminently adoptable, in fact my neighbor is trying to talk
her husband and her rather surly Maine Coon into a new family member.

I have a few leads on where to ask about notices of lost cats, but I
figured it wouldn't hurt to get the word out on the net, too. We're in
a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, just over the line from Dedham.

Priscilla