I posted about a cat hoarding case earlier this year on social media. And I was were prepping to adopt one of the kittens from that case. First off…kudos to the young lady who is working with around 20 kittens from this case….it involved roughly 100 cats spread over 2 shelters. However this young lady took in about 20 kittens and has been raising/socializing them. If anyone local to me is looking to adopt, I can put up you in touch.

Pepper came home this weekend. At roughly 8 months old, this is the third home she has known. Like a lot of animals that are insecure/fearful due to a bumpy backstory, she reacted to her new home by hiding under the master bedroom bed. I would go in and work on my laptop, play bass (unplugged), etc, to get her used to my voice and presence. All I saw were those radar dish ears and wide eyes peering back at me from the darkness under my bed.

After 24 hours, at the encouragement of her foster mom, Ananda and I went in, hoping it would result in Pepper breaking the ice and possibly leaving her bunker. Ananda is a really sweet, outgoing nurturer / adventurer sort anyway. Ana had been nosing around Pepper’s carrier wondering who the new face in the house was.

Five minutes after Ananda and I came in last night, the tiny Maine coon worked her magic. The shy radar dish ears emerged from under my bed and showed us all how pretty the complete cat was. Pepper has a skunk stripe and a “tuxedo cat meets Siamese build” look.

I did a little homework online and found that in some other countries she’s an actual breed or pattern, called a But-Tal-Lon or But-Se-Weis. “The appearance of a white dorsal stripe is unusual and appears to be hereditary especially as it was a recognised variety of cat in old Thai manuscripts.

“The Tamra Maew described a number of bicolour cat patterns, one of which was the But-Se-Weis/But-Tal-Lon, a black cat with a white dorsal stripe. The descriptions were considered fanciful by many western cat fanciers, but a growing interest in Thai breeds and the ease of uploading photographs to the internet has shown that the patterns do indeed exist. It is not a recognised pattern in any Western cat breed.”

There’s some great pics from one of these documents here.

All good, she’s our Pepper.

The video shows Ana returning from her extraction mission, realizing Pepper is following. Pepper realizes I’m there and pauses, but decides to proceed (Ana is sitting next to me now). The second clip is Pepper trying to befriend Ananda. #progress #adoptdontshop #makingfriends