I'm new, too! I have two kitties: a huge orange luv bug of a boy kitty named Toulouse who I adopted from a local rescue group that does TNR here. His mom was a feral who was TNRed, and he and his brother and sisters were placed through the rescue.
My other cat is a little mackerel tabby named Violet who is a total nut half the time and a lovey little baby the other half. A few years ago, my dog, Usagi, was playing in the yard when we hear her start doing the bark that usually means she's found a tortoise and is annoying the heck out of him. But, as soon as my husband gets outside, he sees what he thinks is a baby raccoon trying to look big before Usagi grabs the little guy in her mouth and runs around the yard like a lunatic. Luckily, she knows the "drop it" command very well and she does. That's when we realized she didn't have a baby raccoon, but a tiny kitten she found under our shed. So...that's how we ended up taking care of a 3 week old kitten who grew up to be our Violet, who we adore. We never were able to catch and spay her mom, a very wary feral who we had seen in our yard, but would never get anywhere near our house, even when we put out wet food for her. I don't think after Usagi scared her that she was willing to take a chance of meeting up with her again. And Usagi has learned the lesson that squeaky toys you find outside grow up to be annoying little sisters who think it's funny to slap you on the butt. ;)
