Laila
Date de Naissance: 01/08/2016
Sexe: Femelle
Accueil le: 01/10/2016
Race: European Cat
Laila, Aramis et Cheyenne were born under a barn in a village not far from Mudita Sanctuary. Their mother had been abandoned there for unknown reasons, left to fend for herself. She was a house cat who was no longer wanted, but she was not sterilised.
Eventually the owner of the barn wanted the kittens gone, and asked her neighbour if she could help trap them to bring them to the SPCA. This neighbour called us to inform of the situation and to ask whether we would be able to take them in. We were aware that any kitten under two months was automatically being euthanised at the SPCA, so we weren’t going to let that happen.
We asked the SPCA to borrow one of their trapping cages and we brought the kittens back to Mudita. Unfortunately we had to give the cage back immediately which meant that we had to release these very wild kittens somewhere at the sanctuary. Luckily we had a vacant room in which we could put them. Normally we would first keep any new (wild) cat in a dog bench until they get used to us and start becoming more social. It’s not advised to give them so much space from the get go but at that time we didn’t have an option.
Laila immediately crawled away and disappeared. It didn’t take long before she started meowing considerably and since we could not find her we believed that she might be trapped in the ceiling that had just been redone when we added new ecological insulation. We urgently called the person who installed the insulation saying there was a cat trapped there. He ripped open a square metre of the new build only to say that there was no sign of the cat. Finally Laila was found hiding somewhere we hadn’t thought to look, she wasn’t stuck at all. She stayed there for two or three days before she finally came out.
We tried to have them adopted but for months nobody was interested aside from someone who lived next to a very busy road, this was deemed unsuitable so Ariane decided to keep all three. There also comes a moment when an animal has been in our care too long for us to emotionally be able to part with them… The three cats stayed separate from the other animals for three or four months whilst we still sought an adoption family, then finally we started to introduce them to the other cats. They are tolerated by most but are still not fully accepted in the clowder. Therefore they spend most of their time outdoors.
All the cats are very well behaved inside, they are clean and don’t spray anywhere. They are all very affectionate and friendly once inside which is quite unusual for cats as wild as these were.
Laila was, and still is, the most homey one, so whilst she likes to be out in the day she always likes to come in at night.