You can read more about Corbie (and his brothers!) at their foster page, here.
February 8, 2010 – January 18, 2015.
We said goodbye to Corbie on January 18th; you can see the post about that here.
About Corbie.
Corbie turned two years old in February.
In March of 2010, Fred called from work to tell me that under the same bush where he’d found the Wonkas the previous September, was a new batch of kittens. The mother cat had been spotted running around in the area, and we decided that rather than bring the kittens home right then, he’d leave the kittens where they were, and we’d attempt to catch the mother cat so she could stop bringing these kittens – awesome as they were – into the world. He took the trap to work with him the next day and set it up in the early morning. When he stopped to check the trap on his way home, the kittens came spilling out from under the bush where they’d been, and he was worried that they’d wander into the parking lot, and decided to bring them home. He re-baited the trap and brought the kittens home.
That litter of kittens – four boys – were the Bookworms, and Corbett was one of them (the other three were Reacher, Bolitar (who became Buster), and Rhyme).
Because the Wonkas had all initially tested positive for FIV and then tested negative some months later, we expected that the Bookworms were going to be FIV positive as well. They were, but as expected they tested negative several months later.
(When Fred checked the trap the next morning, their mother was inside. She was terrified, and when I picked her up and took her to the vet, we found that she was not only FIV positive, she was pretty sick. I made the decision to have her euthanised.)
I will be honest with y’all, I did not know initially that Corbett (who was named after Matthew Corbett from the Robert McCammon series of books) was going to turn out to be the most beautiful cat on the face of the planet. He and Rhyme were both brown tabbies, and I actually had a hard time telling them apart.
(Though of course NOW I can look at pictures of them from then, and immediately know which one is Corbie. He’s on the right in that picture.)
The Bookworms were here longer than kittens usually are, because we waited a few months to have them retested, and then by the time they were ready to go, there were a bunch of kittens waiting to go ahead of them. When they finally went to Petsmart, they had developed a strong fear of strangers. Eventually, all four of them ended up back here.
I honestly believed that we were going to end up with all four of the Bookworms here with us. But then someone wanted to adopt Bolitar (Buster). Then Rhyme and Corbie went to Petsmart, but Corbie wasn’t eating, and we were pretty concerned with how thin he’d gotten, so we left Rhyme at Petsmart, and brought Corbie home. Rhyme was adopted, and then a few days later Kathy adopted Reacher, and that left Corbie here with us.
At that point, I was pretty sure that we were going to be keeping Corbie, but it was another month or so before I asked Fred if I could make it official, and he agreed.
I know not everyone sees it, but I think Corbie is the most beautiful cat ever. But he’s not just beautiful, oh no – he is a sweet boy, and he is a GOOD boy, and if he thinks you have a treat for him, he is a HAPPY boy. He has a box in the kitchen that he’s claimed as his own (though other cats will occasionally lay in it). It’s his safe place, and if he’s worried or feels threatened, into the box he goes. He likes it when you hide treats for him under the the brown paper in the box. You know, it’s the little things that make him happy.
He’s a good friend to Jake, and he likes to play with Elwood. He’s happiest, though, when he’s rolling around in the sun on the cement pad in the back yard. He likes to be petted, and he adores nibbling on the fingers of one of your hands while you’re petting him with your other hand.
The muscles in Corbie’s back end are not as developed as they should be. If you see him, he looks normal from the “waist” forward, but his back end is very thin. One vet had no idea why it would be (blood work showed that there’d been some damage to the muscles; skeletally, he’s perfect), and the other vet suggested that it could be due to his being born to a mother who had FIV. We tried different supplements to build up the muscles. None of them seemed to do anything but make him nervous if we tried to pet him (he’d think we were trying to give him a pill), so we took him off of everything. He’s not getting worse, and he might be a little bit better – we encourage him to climb and to stand up (putting treats in a location that he has to stand on his back legs to get to them). It doesn’t interfere with his ability to get around at all, thankfully!
Nicknames: He’s probably the only cat in the house who has no nicknames at all. He’s just Corbie! Well, I guess Corbie IS his nickname, since he’s listed as “Corbett” at the vet’s office.