Pepito Vivant!
Pepito, the French feral King of Fork Mountain, survived the inhospitable gash behind his right ear in addition to hunkering down through our first snow of the season. While it’s true that I have seen him since the initial injury one week ago (Swooping barred owl? Rusty barbed wire? Mangy hound dog?), I was concerned that he would not be able to clean his own wound given its location. He presented himself today in full sunlight, fully preened and looking quite healthy if I do say so myself.
I suppose by now I shouldn’t be surprised by this cat’s vitality. He survived a year on the mountain without human assistance. At some point during that year, his ear was mauled and is now folded in half with an awkward seam of skin. Last week’s mauling was another one of his nine lives, as they say, but I can tell Pepito has a lot left in him.
[In a rare moment of immodesty, Pepito poses on Fork Mountain.]
Let this blog post serve as an official call for adoption. To all my local readers: I will be moving in January and fear that leaving Pepito on Fork Mountain at the peak of winter will be unfair, to say the least. If you need a low-maintenance barn cat, Pepito is your…man. If you adopt this cat, I’ll even deliver him to your barn door with a full-sized bag of cat food.
Advantages to adoption:
1. Mouse and squirrel population control. (Crawl space, barn, wood shed, tool shed.)
2. Cultural diversity. (Pepito, like all cats, is French. We don’t get enough culture around here.)
3. Good karma.
4. Cost-free other than food. (Pepito is wild and self-sustaining. I have him hooked on cat food, sure, but he’s made it perfectly clear that his ultimate preference is to remain unseen and do the quiet, wild work of cats with as little human interference as possible. In other words: No trips to the vet required.)
If I can find a willing adoptee now, I will begin putting his food in a cat kennel so that he has to enter the kennel in order to eat. When it comes time for me to leave in January, I’ll feed him one day and then close the door. Then I’ll drive him to his new home—a scary venture for him, I’m sure, but better than being inexplicably cut off from your food supply at the peak of winter.
My only other option is the animal shelter, which I find perfectly suitable except for the fact that Pepito’s deformed ear would probably prevent him from being adopted. Please leave a comment here if you would like more information about Pepito, the King of Fork Mountain.
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I love that you talk to Pepito only in French. He sounds like he would be a fine addition, but we've adopted a wild one of our own, A Siamese with no tail that our neighbor calls Tinkerbell.
I finally taught her how to use the cat door my husband installed so I don't have to keep my door cracked. She too loves her cat food but supplements her diet with chipmunks and mice. She doesn't bring them in alive, but she eats them on our welcome mat. There is one unidentifiable "bit" she leaves for us.
Is there a no-kill shelter in Mitchell county? I'm not sure about the one here in Yancey.