Between January and June I was sharing my home with two kittens, Goose and Maverick. I caught them running feral outside my department and spent months turning them around to a domesticated lifestyle.
When I first brought them home I had a hell of a time finding information about what to do with them. Now that their life with me is coming to an end, I thought I’d write up their story in case anyone stumbles across this one day and can use some camaraderie. Plus I get to show off their glamour shots and tell cute stories.
Yes, their names come from Top Gun; although Maverick turned out to be a girl. Female ginger cats are unusual, I assume this is because the gene for ginger coats is recessive, so a female would have to have two copies of the recessive gene in order to be ginger. Males, meanwhile, only need one copy because coat colour in cats is derived from a gene on the X chromosome. Males only have one X chromosome, so they only get one coat colour gene. Ta da! Science 
A very feral Maverick
The twins were approximately four months old when I brought them home, though of this I can’t be sure. They were definitely weaned and the mother wasn’t in sight, so four months is I think the lowest age. I read around online and much of what I found was disheartening. “Some cats can never be tamed”. “Over four months of age the likelihood of taming decreases rapidly”.
A few weeks in and they were crazy. My hands were covered with bites and scratches, the spare room I housed them in stunk of cat pee. What on earth had I gotten myself into? I tell you what, bites from kittens HURT. I haven’t seen myself bleed that much since I copped a branch in the nose while out on field work a few years back. They’d clamp down and hold, it was all I could do not to shake them off and send them flying across the room.
There were many teary phone calls and texts to the Engineer in this time period. I was convinced I’d gotten in over my head, that it was too late for them to be tamed, that they weren’t making progress fast enough. My hands hurt and it broke my heart to see them so terrified of me. Luckily the Engineer is far more steadfast than I am and managed to talk me off the ledge every time.
Suspicious
I had no idea what to do with them to start with. The most useful resource I found were a series of videos from the Urban Cat League in NYC. The aptly titled “Tough Love” videos were the sole reason I kept going with the twin terrors. Right to the point where they say there will be discouraging days, but don’t worry the kittens will not starve themselves.
Next post: what brought them round.
