🐾 Caturday: Taming the Wild Sokoke
Kokee (Sophia) posing with her owner by her choice Sophia came to me courtesy of the one and only local TNR volunteer. Normally, cats in her situation would go to a shelter—but no shelter would take Sophia. She was “too wild.” She’d earned that reputation. The first time she was trapped, she somehow escaped the cage, streaked through the room like lightning, clawed her way up the curtains, hissed, spat, and evaded every attempt to recapture her before vanishing. When she was finally retrapped, she was put under close observation. Snipped, but not subdued, she allowed no one near her. “Not adoptable,” they said. Like so many of my cats before her. Sophia—whom the four-year-old in the household quickly nicknamed Kokee for her Sokoke breed—was special even among the feral arrivals. The Sokoke, from Kenya, is considered the last truly wild domestic cat breed. They are rare in the United States, known for their intelligence, agility, and fierce independence. We placed Sophia in the c...