Wild Thing - spotlight on the 'crazy one'

Spotlight on Tara. Every few days I'll be posting photos of each of my 5 cats and providing their story.)

Tara is one of 4 litter mates that we adopted from the Pat Brody Shelter in 2007.
In the photo above she was only about 7 weeks old - if that. The shelter wasn't completely sure how old they were when they were rescued from certain death.
They all had gooped up eyes, and Tara, to this day, has scar tissue over her left eye.
Tara was the most shy from the beginning, the slowest to come out and play and the quickest to hide (and still is) at an offending time.

We started out fostering the litter with the intent to adopt 2 of them . . . we adopted all 4!

She has several nicknames:

1. Wild Thing - because she a crazy little killer - or she would be if she ever got a hold of a mouse based on how ferociously she pounces on her toy mouses.
2. Crazy thing - because of her odd little frighten, pet me, don't pet me, maybe pet me behavior. She'll turn her back to you, slightly arch her back, but tense and looking like she's about to run away, she'd allow us to pet her. Sometimes purring the entire time.
3. Gentle Flower - Yes, how could she be gentle yet wild - well, gentle flower is how I referred to her because I needed to be the most gentle and quiet with her. Approaching her slowly so as not to frighten her.
4. One White Whisker (because she had one large white whisker -that has since fallen out - I should think it will grow again at some point)
5. Xtra- her name when we first took the foster babies in. We had given them all very quick names, when we got to her, at the time we didn't see any distinguishing marks, so she was Xtra.
6. Tara - Her name now, because she has a sister Scarlett. (Although I don't think my husband realized that Tara was the name of the plantation and not the name of 'Scarlett's sister)
   

Here Tara is (in the foreground with the one white whisker) with her sister Scarlett.

She's come around quite a lot and often will come and sit on my lap. When she was a kitten, she'd sit with me IF her other litter mates were sitting with me, but she'd always be as close to my feet as possible.

Now she 'plop' down on my lap, once she's settled I can pet her freely and she purrs and rolls on her back and doesn't act all frightened.



Not sure if you can make out the scar tissue over her left eye. I've often thought that one of the reason she is the most skittish is because of her eye.

Tara is also the smallest of all her litter mates not very fond of the dry food but she does love her canned food. The way she 'begs' for it is so sweet it's nearly impossible not to give her some.
She merely looks at you, follows a bit, then returns to her food bowl. She'll approach you, not too closer and sort of arch her back and turn away. (That's also her pet me, don't pet me technique.)

Sometimes it seems like she really wants to be petted but she's scared.

Every morning, she races my husband to the bathroom so she can roll around at his feet on his clothing.