Over the last year or two, we had started to be visited pretty frequently by a beautiful stray cat with large paws, snaggle teeth, an ear nicked from, we presumed, fighting, and thick brown fur. He visited so regularly last fall and winter that he wore two paths in our yard between our fence and our back deck, where we would feed him when we found him peering through the windows of our back door.

When the temperature dropped down well below freezing last winter, we took him in one night for fear that he’d die of exposure, and he spent the night snuggled up among our feet in bed, purring. The next day, he took a foul and aggressive dump on our son’s bed, and we knew that the arrangement couldn’t continue (also, one of our other cats hates him, and there was a persistent fear that they would fight). Still, we made what shelter we could for him on the deck and continued to feed him and let him in for brief supervised visits to warm up during the cold months.

Then he disappeared for a good long while. We had been on a mission to fatten him up a bit but feared that we had failed. Of course, we also hoped that perhaps someone else might have taken him in.

A few months ago, he showed up suddenly well groomed (he had begun to accumulate big mats in parts of his fur) and wearing a collar naming him “Chance.” He had been adopted after all! His visits were less frequent, but we felt at least as if he was being properly taken care of.

A couple of weeks ago, he showed up again, still wearing the collar and still reasonably well groomed (if clearly still largely an outdoor cat) but shockingly thin. Perhaps, we thought, he had shat his new owner’s bed as well and had been turned out. We loaded up on fatty food to try to help fatten him up again, as he would visit two or three times a day. We called the number on his new tag and learned, thankfully, that he was still being cared for and was being fed three or four times a day by the folk who had taken him to the vet. They suspected a thyroid problem and were looking into medication for him.

We’ve since learned that the thyroid problem has been confirmed, and he’s on medication. He still stops by a couple of times a day on a lot of days, and he eats ravenously. Hopefully now he’ll begin to put on a little weight (he weighs about half what he should). It’s really pitiful how you can feel each rib, feel his shoulder blades, and tell that he’s mincing about rather than slinking as a cat should. We had discussed with his new owners (to the extent that one can really own a wandering cat) the mercy of putting him down if the thyroid medicine didn’t work out (things like cancer had proven negative), but now we can have at least a brief hope that he might get better.

I’ve never really been a cat person, though I’ve now owned cats for some 16 years of my life. Still, I’ve grown to enjoy Robin’s (for I can’t make myself actually call him Chance) visits. The kids sure love seeing him around. I hope we can fatten him up indeed, and if improving his health means we see less of him because his voracious appetite diminishes, I’ll be glad to see him any time he does drop by our back door with his snaggle teeth and nicked ear.