Pretty Girl’s story is that I started to see her at the Apex Town Hall campus in July of 2014, shortly after I took up walking for exercise (Town Hall is about a half mile from my house). I remembered then that back in summer 2010 we had had a litter of kittens in the rescue that had been trapped with their Mama at Town Hall. Mama was unsocialized and had been one of our first Trap Neuter Vaccinate Return projects, making her a true community cat, while the kittens were fostered by the family of a lady who worked at Town Hall (I’m assuming this is who contacted Alley Cats & Angels about trapping mama and her kittens). My guess is that Pretty Girl was the mama we had trapped and spayed in May of 2010 — she was already ear-tipped when I started seeing her in 2014.
I started feeding her in July of 2014 and have continued since then, finding others to help with that when I was away on trips. As time passed and I kept feeding her she became more comfortable with me. She would rub against my legs before I fed her, and over time I started experimenting with petting her and picking her up. Eventually she let me pick her up and give her some scratches before feeding. I was able to pick her up and pop her in a carrier to get her vaccinated over the years. Occasionally others would see me feeding her — sometimes she’d be following me as we walked to where I fed her and I’d be asked if I was taking my cat out for a walk. Pretty sure I’m known as a crazy cat lady by others who typically walk around the area.
There is an old unoccupied boarded-up house at Town Hall campus (https://capitalareapreservation.com/th_gallery/thompson-utley-fletcher-tunstall-house/) that Pretty Girl liked to hang out by, though she did roam around the entire Town Hall campus site. She could get under the porch of the house through a hole in the bricks so seemed to have a safe place to shelter. Her territory was reduced/restricted when they built the senior center on campus a few years ago but she seemed OK just hanging out by the house and Town Hall. In recent years the town has encased the house in orange mesh to prevent people from getting to it (the porch is not safe now, there are holes in the boards) and even more recently the town has put in place plans to renovate the house. I wondered if I would need to bring her into my house when they started that construction since that would be a severe reduction of her territory, and loss of her shelter under the porch.
I have wanted to bring her into my house for years, but she seemed so happy as an outdoor cat, and not a fan of other cats, so I did not think it would be kind to her to upend her life just so that I could feel she was safer. There have been other cats there over the years, and she was not fond of them. Most recently Blackie, aka Big Boy, took up residence in the area. Another volunteer and I got him neutered last year and I started feeding him regularly as well. I could not feed the two of them in the same spot, though, since they did not care for each other — Blackie would chase Pretty Girl up a tree.
The town has not yet started work on the house, but I ended up bringing Pretty Girl indoors to live at my house in mid-March. She has been remarkably healthy all the years I’ve been feeding her, but in mid-March she stopped eating, though she still came out to say hello to me when I came to feed. After two days of that I put her in a carrier and took her to the vet to see if we could find out what was wrong. Her blood work showed hyperthyroid, which is treatable with twice-daily meds. After a few days inside and on meds her appetite came back and she’s been adjusting to life inside with other cats since then. I’m hopeful she is reasonably content with her new indoor life.