cat collars | Koi Scribblings

It took a lot longer than we expected, but Lefty may have confirmed the “Formerly” in his title of “Formerly Feral Fellow”.

Mind you, he’s not exactly happy about it.

Downright grumpy, in fact.

But an apparently incongruous emotional reaction to a life-changing event is far from uncommon.

It’s been more than a year since I wrote “someday soon he will wear it again“. I’m pretty sure that fourteen months isn’t “soon” by the standards of anyone with a lifespan shorter than your average sequoia.

But, yes.

He is once again wearing a collar.

As of this writing, he’s had it on for four days–it helps that this was intended to be his permanent collar, rather than an extremely weak “test collar”–but after a few unsuccessful attempts to persuade Emeraldas to help him take it off, he hasn’t mustered any strong objections.

And, yes, it does have bling.

I’ll skip the jokes about him being the star of our family and/or the bell [sic] of the ball.

He is Awesome Kitty, though, and we’re delighted that he seems to have accepted that the Well-Dressed Cat-About-the-House wears bling.

Welcome home, Lefty, welcome home.

Another milestone. Or perhaps two, depending on how you count.

Lefty partook of one of the most important rites of passage for a #FormerlyFeralFellow a little while ago.

He wore bling for the first time.

All went well for a few hours. He didn’t seem hugely disturbed by the collar, and only mildly uncertain about the clinking of the bell and nametag.

In fact, for a short time, he even seemed to be posing to show off his new apparel to best advantage.

About twenty hours later, he declared the experiment at an end–that possible second milestone.

The bling ended up on the living room floor, and Lefty has been happily naked since.

We’re not sure what triggered the disrobing. It might have been the noises. Maybe it was accidental, with the collar unsnapping while Lefty was adjusting it.

It was a slightly damaged collar that doesn’t have much to keep it closed. That was a deliberate choice: we wanted it to come off easily if Lefty panicked. So it might just have fallen off.

Regardless, he’s been resisting our attempts to put the collar back on. Not strenuously, and we haven’t been insistent. But someday soon, he will wear it again.

And we trust he’ll wear it with pride as a sign of his agreement that he’s found his forever home.