Sunshine’s Story

In 1999 I caught my first glimpse of Sunshine at the edge of our yard, about a year after we moved into our new home in Jessup. I had never seen such a sad animal. He was painfully thin, hungry, and clearly unwell. I approached as gently as I could with some of my cat’s food. He watched from a distance, then slipped back into the woods. That quiet exchange marked the beginning of a relationship that would prove as rewarding for me as it was for him.

One morning about a week later, I found him on the deck licking grease that had dripped from our barbecue grill. I began leaving food there twice a day. Soon, every sunrise brought my new friend to greet me. He became my Sunshine.

Several months later, Sunshine introduced us to his girlfriend. We had not yet neutered him—he trusted me but always stayed just out of reach, and the idea of trapping him simply never occurred to me at the time. I’m not even sure if TNR was a common practice then. Shortly afterwards his companion Shadow gave birth to a litter of kittens beneath our steps. Like Sunshine, she trusted us. We could pick up and handle the kittens while she rested calmly nearby and watched.

Until Sunshine came into my life, I knew almost nothing about feral cats. I rarely thought about where they came from, how they ended up outdoors, or the short, difficult lives most of them lead. I suspect many people don’t. I eventually learned that our neighborhood held many displaced cats who survived by scavenging at dumpsters. How and why had so many become homeless?

I discovered that a colony can begin with just two cats. Often these animals were once someone’s pets. Their guardians may have intended to have them spayed or neutered, but life intervened—or they assumed an indoor cat would never need the surgery. Cats that are not altered will find a way to mate. If they escape or are let outdoors because of mating-related behavior, some never find their way home again. Once they join a colony, kitten production begins and continues until the cats are sterilized or die.

 

The numbers grow quickly. This is how Sunshine—and so many cats like him—came to be.
Sunshine and his family were eventually all spayed or neutered. The cycle of reproduction stopped, and Sunshine’s story found a happy ending. This is how it all started—and more than 25 years later, we’re still doing what we do.