Scritty

Scrat the cat

Scrat is the household pet name for a feral cat living in the garage of the Stegink family in St. Paul, Minnesota. Scrat resembles a striped tabby cat and may be part bengal cat. It's also possible that she is an ordinary feral cat that has evolved into semi-domesticity.

Scrat appeared in the Stegink's yard beginning in 2004 for occasional visits, but by the fall of 2005 she had become a regular. The family started feeding Scrat because she was very scrawny and emaciated looking, and even purchased a collar for her with their phone number, hoping that her real owners would find the collar and call. The assumption at the time was that she was someone else's cat and that perhaps she was lost or pouting or had been misplaced in our garage.

Despite a very cold winter and meager drinking rations, Scrat thrived on our benign neglect and gradually came to consider us her family. She spent most of the winter holed up on a blanket on the garage floor. Because she is not a very clean cat, her blanket quickly became grimy and needed frequent washings. Over the course of the winter, Scrat began to gain weight and become fluffier and fluffier until she started to resemble a fuzzy fur-covered sphere. At this point in time, we wondered whether she had possibly become pregnant and were looking forward to a wiggling batch of Scrittens.

Scrat is a bit socially maladjusted, but she always runs up when we return home, rubbing up against an ankle while hissing ferociously. She comes when called (either as Scrat or Scritty) and sometimes will allow brief pats or petting. On rare occasions when someone has attempted to pick her up, Scrat responds by slashing them with her razor sharp talons. On other occasions, Scrat has thanked her owners with scraps of dead mice or other small mammal fragments, placing them gently on the doormat.

Hobbies:

living in garages
gnawing off expensive personalized collars
sleeping on blankets and getting them dirty
sleeping in or crouching under large shrubs
hissing and scratching
leg rubbing and yowling
staring at and generally upsetting the "indoor" cats
eating cat food and cat food fragments
finding unauthorized places to poop
disemboweling small rodents

Personal characteristics:

very small, light and company (5 lbs)
wily and clever
able to withstand -20F temperatures
highly drought resistant
fierce, with a total lack of fear

As of June 2006, Scrat moved out of the garage and into an Arctic willow plant in the front yard.