Denise and I both work at the Unversity of Florida (Go Gators!). Every year thousands of students come and go. Unfortunately, they also bring pets and when they leave many of their pets get abandoned. As a result there is a large population of feral cats on campus at any one time.

Welp, one day a year or so ago (time moves so quickly) someone noticed that one of the cats that hung around out building had kittens. This caused quite a stir among us working stiffs. There was talk of catching the kittens, getting them and mom fixed, taking them home, all sorts of stuff. Of course nothing happned. So we ended up with three kittens liging under a bridge outside our building. Being the soft hearted kinda guy I am, I started feeding them. At first I would just drop some food down, then I started going under the bridge to give them some food.

I was doing this on the sly to keep outside involvement (read Physical Plant who would dispose of them) to a minum. Eventually one of my co-workers took over feeding and got very brazen about it. Others got involved and soon we were on cat patrol. I'm not real sure of how it all shook out but there were two more litters of kittens. On litter was caught and taken to either the Humane Society or Gainesville Pet Rescue and the other litter was caught and adopted by various people in the department. The two mommy cats were then caught, and taken to Operation Catnip where they were spayed and then brought back.

These two beacame 'our cats'. My coworker fed them, talked to them and generally cared for them. The black one was named Missy. Missy was the most brazen of the two. Every morning she would wait at the front door waiting on someone to feed her. The grey cat was at first chased off by Missy but came back and staked out her spot (under another bridge). Life was good and everyone (we thought) liked the cats. They never bothered anyone and it was nice to see them in the morning. They would come up to you, and even would submit to a little petting.

Then Edwina retired and the job of feeding the cats fell to me (what goes around, comes around, I guess). Life continued to be good for a couple weeks. Then I got a call. "There's a trap outside, did you set it?" I was asked. "Nope, I didn't" I replied and set out to find out what was going on. There was indeed a trap set out near one of the places Missy liked to take an afternoon snooze. Looking around to see if anyone was watching, I sprung the trap. No one was gonna trap my cats. I then told my coworkers what was going on.

A call to Physical Plant confirmed the worst. Someone had called them about the cats so they were trying to catch them. If caught, we were told, they would be taken to the animal shelter. We would then get a call and have the opportunity to adopt them. Screw that was the genreal consensus, I've delt with the shelter and don't trust them far as I can throw a rabid cougar. We had to find homes for these cats, and do it quick. The Cat Hunt was on!

One of our students is a kind hearted guy who volunteers with the Pet Rescue people and offered to help. Our first plan was to feed them, then grab them while they were eating and put them in a carrier. Well, the less said about that the better other to say that it was a collosial failure.

Plan B involved a trap. We quit feeding the cats so they would be more likely to enter the trap. After a couple days of failure it was the weekend, I felt that we would have the best shot early in the week because after a weekend of no daily food, they would be the hungriest.

So that monday we set the trap for Missy and...nothing. Well, poop. Okay, Tuesday I'll shoot for the grey kitty. Tuesday morning comes around and out I go to set the trap. Success!! Less than 15 minutes after setting the trap I had a cat! Wow, I thought, that was easy. I called Denise (who had taken the morning off) and said I was coming home with a cat. The grey kitty needed a name, so we decided on Nuke (new kitty = nuke) and put her in the back bathroom with some food and a litter box and expected the rest of our animals to go berzerk. To our amazement everyone was ultra calm. Nuke was quiet and actually used the litter box before settling into the sink as a prefered place to lounge. Deinse called the vet to make an appointment to get her checked out. Our vet could see her early that afternoon (which ensured me a day off) which was a load off our minds.

To be honest I wasn't worried about the trip to the vet. I went to the bathroom, petted Nuke for a moment and picked her up put her in the carrier with no problem. This is a feral cat? I don't think so! Nuke stayed calm the whole time. It wasn't until she was taken to the back for blood-draws and shots that she freaked. Apparently she bit one of the techs through the thumbnail! After all that activity, she was brought back to us as calm as a cucumber. So we wait, discussing how we are going to intergrate a fourth cat into our lives.

Then the vet comes out with the test results. Nuke has tested positive for Feline Lukemia. It was like someone punched me in the stomach. I had grown very attached to Nuke and the thought of losing her wasn't something that we had even considered. We had a few options we were told. First, lukemia isn't a death sentence. About 40% of the cats that have it are just carriers who can live a long healthy life. Nuke was in good shape and seemingly healthy so there was a chance. If we wanted to keep her we could get our other cats innoculated (which would take a month or more to take full effect) and even then it's not 100% but with Elvira being diabetic that didn't seem like a good idea. So we were down to finding someone to give her a home without other cats, because our last hope of keeping her left when our other cats tested negative for lukemia.

The clock was ticking and there were only a couple people I knew that might be able to take her. Otherwise she would have to be put to sleep for the safety of other cats. My best hope was my assistant at work. She and her family lives on a 40 acre horse farm with no other cats. Nuke could live in the barn, be free to roam as she was used to and just genreally have an easy time of it. The only flaw was that her dad hates cats. The ace in the hole was that how many fathers do you know that can deny their daughters anything? That what I thought.

After a night of playing all the cards in the deck "But Dad, you won't even know she's there, she can catch mice in the barn, they'll kill her if I don't take her!" she came up with a full house. The next day, my assistant and I took a ride home to pick up Nuke to be taken to her wonderful new home! She obviously needed a new name, my assistant didn't care for Nuke as a name and pondered "Battlecat" (which I loved) before settling on "Phoebe" (which sounds pretty good).

So, after a couple worrysome nights, Phoebe aka Nuke aka Battlecat is now living the luxury life of a barn cat. It was hard to let her go, but I'm happy we could find her a place to go. My assistant reports that she really hasn't seen her but something keeps eating the food so we're hopeful that it's Phoebe.