Olivia was an unspayed female feral cat who produced litters twice a year. She had avoided trapping many times, while all the other ferals in the area had eventually been trapped and spayed/neutered/vaccinated. Before I met Olivia, she was "just a feral cat". Unwanted and unloved.

After she had a litter of kittens under our shed, my neighbor asked me if I would put food out for her. Olivia had been eating in their yard with their ferals but she would fight over the food and they didn't want her coming around and causing fights with the others.

One morning while she was over there eating, her kittens wandered away. When she came back, she was frantically searching for them. My heart went out to her that day, I felt so bad for her. I put out some food and she gratefully gobbled it down, then went back out in search of her kittens. She did finally find them and bring them home, much to my relief.

The next day when I woke up, she was sitting in the driveway looking up at the window, waiting to see if I would put food out again. Of course I did, and have done so every day since then.

Olivia was very unfriendly at first. When I would come out with food she would growl at me and hiss at me. I would talk kindly to her, put the food down and go inside to give her space. Over time I believe she began to respect me as someone who cares, and I respected her freedom and her need for her own space.

I have never touched Olivia, nor would I ever attempt to touch her. But I love her just as much as I would if she sat in my lap every day. I believe that, in her feral way, Olivia loves me too.

Olivia doesn't like it when I get angry. If I go outside with food and she hisses at one of the other ferals, I say "Olivia! I don't like that!" in a stern tone. She will back away and look at the ground, as though she knows she was a bad girl.

Olivia, to me, always seemed so regal. She never had time to play, she was always pregnant, nursing, or carting kittens around showing them how to survive in the wild. She moved about like royalty. This is why the name Olivia seemed to fit, it sounds like royalty.

In my fourth year of knowing Olivia, in March of 2009, to be exact, I set out to trap all my ferals, which included Olivia and all of her offspring that had survived over the last four years. For a week, I kept traps outside, unset, with food in them, so that they got used to having their food in the traps. On the day before their spay/neuter appointment, I set the traps and went in the house. I quickly caught the four from her previous litter and moved their traps to the front porch so that the others wouldn't be afraid to come and eat. Then I saw Olivia approaching and watched from the kitchen window. Olivia had avoided trapping for years so I was unsure of whether I would be able to catch her on this day. However, she walked right into the trap to eat and I watched as the door closed behind her.

Olivia didn't panic and thrash around in the trap like the others did. I guess it was her royalty coming into play again! She knew she was caught and she just sat and looked at me as I came outside to cover her trap and move it onto the front porch.

Olivia and all the others went to be spayed/neutered the following morning. The surgeries went well and they were all returned to me the afternoon after the surgeries. When Olivia's trap was opened she shot out of it as if she were shot from a cannon. She ran to her little hiding spot and wasn't seen again for five days. I was beginning to worry when, on the fifth day, she arrived in the backyard to eat as if nothing had ever happened.

The clinic that spayed Olivia guessed she was approximately ten years old, and not five as we had thought. So Olivia had been living out in the wild for ten years, producing two litters a year. She wouldn't have survived many more pregnancies. I felt so happy for Olivia. Never again would she have to go through pregnancy, nursing, or carting kittens around with her. She was free! She could do what she pleased when she pleased and worry only about herself, for the first time since she, herself, was a kitten.

One night about a month later, I happened to glance out the back window where all the ferals would usually be playing in the backyard. All except Olivia, that is, because Olivia didn't run and play. Olivia had never had the time to play, she was too busy going about the business of surviving. Well on this particular night I saw something that made me cry with happiness. Olivia was playing! Acting like a carefree little kitten! She was running and hopping, stalking and pouncing. Olivia was having fun!

That night as I sat and thought about this wondrous sight, I realized that for all the work involved in caring for the ferals, and all the heartache when one is lost to illness or accident, it's worth all of it just to live that one moment in time, the very first moment ever that I saw Olivia happy and having fun.

A few months have passed since that night and I am so happy to be able to say that Olivia is strong and healthy. She plays all the time now. Olivia is enjoying her newfound freedom. She is enjoying her life, as it should be.