Truly. Deeply. Madly

When I saw him at the adoption center, he was a young tom, just in his last year of leggy growth. Two years old, perhaps, or just going on three before he'd been fixed, so he had developed that unmistakably male conformation without the jowly, bulldog frame of a true adult. He was comfortingly large, even then, and he sat, loaf-like and zen in his cage, not clawing through the bars, not squeaking for attention, and not hiding in the center of the cage, and scowling reproachfully at reaching monkey fingers as all the others were doing.

He was still, he was calm, and he accepted scratches to the head with grace and a purr that convinced me here was a clever boy who should come home with me, despite his being a silver tabby instead of a black, as Yasha had been. At home at that time, it was just Godric and Hilfy, and they weren't getting along at all well -- Godric was too social, and Hilfy hated that he wasn't Yasha, and that was leading to WAY too much screaming. We needed a playmate for Godric before someone got hurt, and something about the silver cat-loaf in cage four just proclaimed that he was the one.

They were calling him "Austin" then, and he came with a Story. He'd been born with a tail, it seems, but had been reckless near a road one night, and had run afoul of a car. He'd been taken to a vet's office after a motorist found him in the street, where his tail was amputated, and he had much work done on his pelvis and spine. Also, the person who dropped him off never came back for him, and either he had no identification tags on, or the vet's office never put them to use, because he stayed there, in that cage at the vet's office for some six months.

You cannot lock a cat in a cage for six months straight without severely damaging it, especially if you torture it with painful medical procedures, and a constant stream of other animals and people the entire time. You get something called "Cage Crazy," and it's more violent, more defensive, and more dangerous than any feral cat you'll encounter. A feral cat, after all, will accept water or food from a human if it's hungry or thirsty, whereas a cage crazy is just as likely to attack the human first.

And that's where Austin was, mentally, when the rescue agency got him. His hostling took it upon herself to rehab him, and to work with him until he was adoptable, and she did a wonderful job. She took him from the mental state of a prison inmate, to that calm, sedate loaf of a cat we'd met in the center, and we gave her full marks for the work she did with him.

However, in her convincing him that neither she, nor any other humans were going to hurt him, he'd come away with a bit of a ... preciousness to him, along with some lingering PTSD that didn't emerge clearly until we got him home. He bit me the first night we had him. I bit him back, as is my habit with cats, and he was utterly shocked. He didn't let me get within touching distance of him for nearly another week. I left him to his sulk, disappointed, but determined that no, I was not going to be topped by a fifteen pound cat, thanks. I continued to enforce the rules of where to scratch, and no, you may not be on the countertops, I clipped his claws despite his rather violent protests to the contrary, continued to slap him upside the head when he struck at me out of the blue, and continued to talk to him in normal tones when he wasn't being a butt. In short, I set about convincing him that he was just a cat, and not a fragile creature who warranted the Kid Glove treatment.

And I also made a point of petting the other cats where he could see it -- of showing him how much they enjoyed the lap love, and how happy it made them to cuddle. I offered him treats when the others got them, made him submit to a stroke on the head or two when it was feeding time, and learned to read the tension in his ears by way of an Early Warning System, so I could keep him from striping my friends and houseguests when his PTSD would fire, and he'd suddenly decide out of the blue that he was being Oppressed.

He still got a couple of people, but he stopped even swinging at me, and over the course of that first year, he began, little by little, to explore the concept that he might actually like humans after all.

A big -- a HUGE part of his rehab has been his freedom to go outside when the weather allows. That was immediately obvious in the way that his PTSD behavior decreased dramatically after the first time he went out, and came back to the house willingly when he was done. Even now, he starts getting really twitchy toward the end of winter, when we've all been cooped up indoors for three months or more. Something about feeling grass under his paws, and getting the scent of dirt in his nose convinces him that he's Just A Cat in a way that nothing else does for him. We noticed it early -- when he saw us outside, he'd approach readily, investigate what we were doing, stick around, pride-like, and even allow... encourage us to pick him up for brief moments.

There were still things we didn't expect of him though -- lap, for instance, was just Not His Thing. It felt too much like confinement, I suppose. He'd let you sit by him on the sofa, if he was there first, and would allow pets for awhile, and he'd sleep on the bed when the weather was cold, but if you were in a chair, he didn't have anything to say to you. Occasionally one or the other of us would pick him up and put him there, and he might stay for awhile, but it was never under his own steam.

Until recently. This past year, he's begun to come over to me (most often,) and Dominus in our armchairs, or at my desk, and to give a little cat-hail call that translates as "Can I come see you?" or sometimes, even as "Make a lap, I'm comin' up," if there's knitting, or a computer in the way. He doesn't settle in for a prolonged cuddle, usually, but there's a deep significance that he's coming to us for love at all. He climbs into the lap, and he purrs, and he actively participates in the scratchings and pettings, in the 'ooh, harder there... now over here... aaah...' kind of way. He doesn't slap, even when his tail-socket gets brushed in a long stroke, and he doesn't even bitch about it when I grab the brush for a bit.

(That was one of our most over-the-top fights, by the way; brushing. He Did Not Want, and I was not about to let him get his way about it when he was shedding like a fiend, and horking hairballs everywhere. So when he started screaming at me, biting, and trying to claw me, I fought back, bit his ear, and restrained him in a monkey-hug he couldn't escape, until he calmed down to just cursing at me, and was no longer aiming for blood. Then I time-outed him in the half bath off the kitchen to cool down in the dark for fifteen minutes, and went in with some food to sit with him afterward. We made our peace, him with purrs, and headbutts, me with ear scritchings and his favorite food, and he has never fought me over brushing since then.)

As Dominus likes to say, "Austin has left the building." Because this well-adjusted boy is nothing like the damaged creature we brought home. He's friendly and social with guests, he hasn't swatted at anybody in nearly a year now, even when they pick him up. He shepherds Cyrene and Sirocco away from the street whenever he sees them down there, and while he is something of a bully where Hilfy is concerned, I can't say she doesn't goad him to it at least half the time. On Saturday morning lie-ins, he'll usually climb atop one or the other of us for a snuggle just at the end of the sleeping, as though telling the others 'Keep it down for awhile longer; I want a nap on Dad.' And he comes literally galloping across the yard to greet us if he should be outside when we come home to the house.

He's happy here, and gradually he's forgotten what it's like to live in fear.

The real telling point, I think, was his constipation sensation earlier this year, where I had to take him to the vet for a couple of days. Remember when he bit the vet, and she reported it to the County Health board? Well, when it happened, she'd been trying to get him cleaned up to go home. We were waiting out front, and heard the Hiss-splosion, followed by her shouting "Nope, I can't get him!"

So we go on back, to find her clutching a tissue to her hand, and Mithril huddling in the steel cage, in full defensive 'reach in here and draw back a stub' position. I met his eyes, and called out "Hey, buddy! You ready to go home?" And suddenly the steel cage became a purr echo-chamber, and the claws-at-the-ready became happy-feet. He all but jumped into my arms when I reached for him, and he didn't speak a peep of complaint, either when we put him into the carrier, nor on the whole ride home.

And that, in a very large, rambly nutshell, is Our Brother Mithril -- brighter than silver, as light as a feather, and as hard as dragon-scale. We're lucky to have him; he keeps the house safe from mouses, and invading Great Danes Spotty Morons.