Samir's Story

[marina_bonomi]

Since a while, when I get asked how many cats we have, my answer is 'three and a half'.

Why? Well, because there is Samir.

Since last year we have had a visitor, an aguti tom who came to court our Shaya (she is neutered, but shows traces of hormonal changes in season and evidently nearby males feel it too).
Last year he was definitely well fed and looked cared after, we thought it was a neighbour's cat. This year, when he showed up, he was thinner, and his fur was duller and knotty, in some places it looked like he had torn the knots away with teeth or nails.

A couple of times he stole inside, alert and jumpy, to eat what he could from the bowls of the resident cats. After catching him at it and seeing that he was eating like he was starving, not just tasting food from another table, I began to leave a bowl on the windowsill just for him.

At the beginning he was very cautious, coming in just with head and shoulders, just enough to reach the food, and ready to jump out at any strange sound or move, in a while he let me approach him and, since about a week even touch him.

And the first touch worked wonders. He has shown that he knows caresses, gives head-bumps and as soon as he's stroked his tail goes up.

This morning he came inside to eat, in the room where all the bowls are, and after eating, slowly and calmly, not like earlier, as someone afraid the bowl will be taken away, he and I enjoyed a ten minute session of stroking and purring, while Shikari assisted to the scene sending calming signals full-force (I'd swear that one is a cat-psycotherapist, he has a wonderful influence on any other cat near him).

And this afternoon  he came inside again, not looking for food, but for me.
He rubbed his head against doors and forniture, against my legs too, came in the living room, where Shaya was, and begged to be stroked, standing on his hind-legs like a meerkat to keep contact with my hand and even rolling on his back exposing his belly, al the while purring like a Ferrari. He only went out when hubby arrived home (he appears not to trust men much, even though he doesn't run away all-out anymore).

Hopefully in some time he'll trust us enough to stay, he's a lovely creature and one that, from all the signs either has been abandoned or has lost the home he had.
He needed a name, we felt, and I wanted something unusual for him, something that would remind me of the desert, which colors I see in his fur, we chose 'Samir', I'm told it means 'friend'.