People and Their Pets: Wadsworth

Posted 6:18 AM, July 26, 2007, by jaruiz

In 2001, Wadsworth was found at Wadsworth State Park in Middletown, Connecticut. He was living in the wild, as a feral kitten, and caught the attention of the Dean of Humanities at Wesleyan University, who happened to be jogging along the pedestrian path at the park. She trapped him, and he became a "foster" pet. He went through five different owners. I was a beginning assistant professor at Wesleyan when I met him. He was about three months old, and he was living in the inbox of the Wesleyan student assembly administrator. He stepped down from the inbox and proceeded to run around the office, spillling papers and generally creating havoc. I thought he was too wild to adopt. When I returned home, I received many emails with pictures of Wadsworth (the Wesleyan staff had already named him) and requests that I return and visit him again.

The next day, I returned to the office of the Wesleyan student assembly administrator. She already had all of his belongings packed and some extras to entice me to adopt him. So, I did. The first year of living with Wadsworth as a feral kitten was difficult. He had a lot of energy! He liked to tear down my pictures that were hanging on the walls (he jumps very high) and dig up my potted plants. If I didn't get up early enough in the morning to pet him, he would jump on the counter and knock off any dishes I had left there the night before. I began to realize why he initially had five different owners. After a year, however, he began to become much tamer and now, at age six, he's a great cat. In this picture, he is lying in my frying pan, which was one of his favorite places to sit and watch me when he was a kitten.