Students were coming up to the Hive Supply and asking for, like, cans of tuna, like, “Oh, there’s like cat outside.”
They said it was by four glass doors that lead outside to the RCTC forest.
The janitor was getting upset that students were going outside and tracking mud back in.
Somebody said, “There’s a cat outside. She showed up like a week and a half ago, dug a hole. She’s been in the hole and we’ve been feeding her but she won’t let us touch her.”
Two or three told me about it. My entire life, my grandma has worked for Camp Companions. I’ve been with my grandma, since I could walk, trapping cats and doing all this stuff. So of course the first thing I do is text my grandma, “What would you do if I brought a cat to your house?”
She goes, “Oh, what’s the cat story?”
I said, “I don’t know the story. It’s outside the school on campus.”
She goes, “I’ll be there in 20 minutes with a live trap.”
And she shows up 20 minutes later, gives me the live trap. I go up to the cafeteria, I go out the doors, and I set up the trap. And just for funsies I try calling the cat.
“Kitty-kitty, kitty-kitty…“
I hear one little meow. One little meow from the hole.
Oh my gosh, she’s in that hole.
I put wet food on my fingers and I let her lick it off. She started to trust me and I got to petting her. I was able to scruff her and put her in the trap.
There were a few nursing students on the couch by the window where the cat was, watching me do this.
I’m like, if I don’t catch this cat, this is gonna be so lame. But I caught the cat. I got her in the trap. I covered her up. And I brought her inside and I called my grandma.
“Hey, I caught the cat.”
She goes, “I haven’t even gotten back to Byron yet. I’ll turn around.”
So she turns around, she came back. She got the cat and she was like, “It looks like a farm cat.”
This cat is friendly, but doesn’t like being picked up. We checked her for a microchip and there was no microchip.
Well, what do we do now?
My grandma was like, “Well, I’m going to take her home. But you need to name her because you caught her.”
I named her Sting, after our mascot.
My grandma thinks that she’s six to eight months old. She’s just a little black and white tuxedo cat. I think she probably hitched a ride into town on a farm truck; that a student here, probably lives on a farm and the cat probably climbed into like the engine of the car during the week, one of the cold days, rode to school, then 
crawled out and was like, “Oh, I’m not doing that again.”
It looks like she has frostbite on her ears. Not horribly, but when an animal gets frostbite, they get really shiny skin. It’s almost like when we have dry skin. I was able to pet her and I felt it and it feels like frostbite. So I think she was probably out there for at least a week and a half.
Right now she is in my grandma’s laundry room, which is also the sunroom; it’s a wall of windows and she has a heated cat bed and toys and she is spoiled rotten.
She’s being fostered. She’s going to the vet, she’s gonna get all of her shots. She’s gonna get fixed and then she’ll be put up for adoption. The nursing students that watched me catch her, they were like, “Can you send us like the link for her for her adoption forms?”
As far as I know, she’s been adopted, so we have a happy ending to the story.
story, photos, and rescue by Harley Overson