18/04/2025
Oreo’s story - food for thought!
It is with Oreo’s (new) owners’ permission that we share her sad and heart piercing, yet utterly heart warming and life affirming story. She is in the truest sense of the word a rescue cat.
Oreo came to stay with us initially just for just a few days, in order to spare her the upset and stress it inevitably would cause her, whilst her mum and dad were moving house. However, Oreo’s stay needed to be extended to just over three weeks, because of unexpected delays with workmen.
Oreo is a rescue Siamese Lynx Point (we actually thought that she might have been an Egyptian Mau). That all sounds very posh, but it would seem that Oreo’s life experience far from has fallen into that category. The knowledge we (Oreo’s owners) have of her history is patchy but a lot can possibly be gleaned from her behaviours with us in the cattery. Put together, we think that little Oreo tells an incredibly sad story.
We know that Oreo had been a cat used to breed kittens to be sold for profit, before she
at an early senior age was sold on to someone from whom she duly escaped and never returned. She appeared in her current owners’ shed, where it turned out she was pregnant again and where she had her kittens. Cats’ Protection helped in the process of finding new homes for the kittens and eventually trapping little Oreo, so that her new owners could take care of her in their home.
Judging by her behaviours, we thought that Oreo was clearly familiar with humans around her, but she was in no way comfortable. We imagine that she, before being rescued, has been kept in a relatively small pen, where the only contact she has had with humans has been for them to clean her litter tray and put food down for her. With us, she tolerated our presence, but we were met with fear and suspicion, which did not manifest as aggression but more so learned helplessness and submission. Oreo did not understand affection and love from a stranger. The first many days of her stay, she hid in her pyramid and under a bed which we had turned upside down for her. She was also being fed there.
I imagine that in her previous life, Oreo has regularly been paired with a male cat, and that her only real emotional connection and comfort has been with her kittens ….. which then would have been removed from her at the earliest age possible, only for her to be paired with a male cat again. I observed her incredible maternal instincts, when she (later in her stay) came running to the front of the pen, seemingly concerned, because she had heard the meow of another cat in the cattery.
With a lot of patience, and a careful, gentle and staged approach, Oreo finally came out from her hiding space in the bedroom, and she started feeding in the open and in my presence, but still on the top shelf of her bedroom. She began not only to accept touch from me, but to understand that touch from a stranger could give comfort and pleasure; she submissively bared her tummy, pushed her head in against my hand and particularly loved having her ears cuddled.
Oreo eventually did venture out into the front part of her pen, where she could be a part of the wider cattery environment. She enjoyed the entertainment provided by the wild life and our chickens outside the windows, and she kept me company whilst I was working in the cattery. I would like to think that Oreo came to some understanding that humans are not just there to feed her, but that they can offer a different, more genuine kind of love and care.
After three weeks, Oreo returned to her incredibly loving and caring owners. They later updated us that she had settled quickly and well in her new house and is now living in a luxury environment filled with love and affection, -well away from the “care” of unscrupulous breeders.
