Goodbye, Sweet Scruffer

We lost Scruffer on Tuesday - one of our beloved ferals, who we said goodbye to on National Feral Cat Day. You haven't seen pictures of this guy - he wasn't the most photogenic. His fur coat was usually pretty dirty, and his nose was usually a little runny, and no matter how many cans of wet food we sent his way, Scruffer was always pretty skinny. But Scruffer greeted our staff and volunteers every morning, awaiting his breakfast. He would sit patiently in the feral cat house - never the first of the OAR colony to get his food, just watching cautiously to make sure he got his share without us getting too close.

The staff and volunteers at OAR loved this boy fiercely, even though we had to love him from afar. Scruffer stayed feral to the end; we never mentioned to him about all the kisses and chin scratches he got while we had him under anesthesia to get him cleaned up and back to health over the summer! As Scruffer started getting sicker, all anyone at OAR wanted to do was scoop him up, bring him inside, and snuggle him. We never got the chance. But we gave him the best life we could give him, and were with him to say goodbye. We know Scruffer understood that he was part of the OAR family. We know he trusted us as much as he could trust anyone. And while it may not feel like enough to the OAR family right now, we just hope we did enough for this tough little guy. And we hope he understood that he was loved to the end.