So where were we? Ah, yes…continuing the countdown introducing you to my 4-legged menagerie and their various personality traits that either drive me nuts or endear me to them even more. We’ve finished with Skip, Oliver and Fat Jack. So let’s tackle Savannah and Dash next, shall we? (Yes, we shall).

So I trapped Savannah in 2013 across the street from the hotel where I trapped Fat Jack in Valley Ford. She lived under the local grocery store with 20 other ferals. Savannah was a mess; she had a broken tail, weepy eyes, and a horrible mouth. After getting spayed, she had a bunch of teeth pulled, received antibiotics for her eye infection and had most of her tail amputated. Yep, she was a keeper. Failed foster #4.

Savvy, as I often call her, is such a sweet soul. Super shy, she doesn’t show herself when people visit. She tends to be a sit-back-and-take-it-all-in-kind-of-cat, observing from a distance, her little stub of a tail swaying back and forth like a tiny windshield wiper.

Savvy tends to be a loner except when she’s feeling playful, which is rare. Her modus operandi: Jump one of the sleeping cats, whereupon a wrestling match ensues. She attempts to bite that cat’s ear, but with very few teeth, she doesn’t pack much of a punch and inevitably saunters off, seemingly quite proud of herself.

Savvy prefers to sleep alone, having staked her claim on the upstairs dormer window seat.

If I have a fire going, you can bet she has first dibs on the hearth.

When eating, she sometimes grazes from the other cats’ bowls but politely moves on when they push her aside. And early every morning she climbs under the covers with me and snuggles against my neck in utter contentedness, often falling back to sleep. It’s my favorite time of the morning.

Okay, now on to Dash. He was already at Marin Humane when I met him in the feral room. Originally named Panther, Dash was a hisser, spitter and lunger — a perfect fit for the family who wanted a mouser that would keep its distance, as they were allergic to cats. A perfect fit, right?

Two months later I received a call that Dash wanted to come inside. I was stunned. He fooled me into believing he was feral. So Dash came home with me. He adapted quickly to my other pets and became such a love, I couldn’t give him up. Failed foster #5.

Now don’t get me wrong; introducing new animals to the fold can be tricky, but I’ve been fortunate that all my pets get along great 98% of the time. Jack is the 2% instigator. But that Dash is a funny one. It took him 6 years before my friends even got a glimpse of him. I’m pretty sure they thought he was a figment of my imagination.

Dash wraps his tail around my neck from the back of my easy chair.

He lets me pet his belly and to wake me up, he drapes himself across my legs like one of those weighted blankets used for people (like me) with sleep troubles. Under no circumstances will he move until he feels like it. Trust me, I’ve tried. That boy is dead weight.

At dinnertime, Dash plays hard to get and dashes (hence the name) around the backyard, taunting me when I call him in to eat. He saunters up to the door, I open it, he leaps into the air, then hightails it across the yard like he’s on fire. He only returns once I leave to feed the others. I find him impatiently waiting at the door, practically stomping his paw in disgust and giving me THE LOOK as if to say, “What took you so long?!” It’s our nightly ritual.

So that’s Savannah and Dash. Five down, five to go…