Grizzy & Peaches – Part II: Grizzy

Grizzy arrived at the sanctuary last summer with two eyes, his friend Peaches, and a temperament that had me mistakenly calling him Grizzly, like the bear, for months.

Not long after arrival, he’d lost his left eye to an infection and Peaches had to be moved to another cage because the strain of being with him in his current vitriolic state was too much for her.

These days, he generally lives on top of the cages in the double wide, coming down to floor level only rarely. He seems to have made a friend or two, with a grey and white cat called Harry able to share a blanket with him without any skirmishes. A few other cats, however, seem bent on harassing him. And so he’s still having a bit of a tough time of it.

For any inclined to take pity and try to spend a little time with him, Marianne says:

“He loves to have special wet food or treats served to him and will allow a few pets while he’s eating these goodies, but will then growl (I suppose that’s how he got his name) and swat at the hand that feeds him.  Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on my part, but his swats don’t seem to be quite as nasty as they used to be.  I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, he once was a nice cat and could be again someday, but that life has been unkind to him recently and he’s become kind of bitter.”

True, tonight when I made the mistake of waiting until he’d finished his wet food before petting him and he responded by swatting me, it lacked the violence of the swats he doled out while in his cage. I mean, he didn’t even draw blood!

Looking at his face in the pictures below, I, like Marianne, can’t help but think there’s a neat cat in there somewhere buried under all that bitterness over his rotten luck. And I’m willing to risk a few more swats to find out.