Inmate Central: RE: To know love by oddmanout

All three of our pets are rescues. We rescued an 8 year old Labrador who had such severe allergies that her previous owner had to give her up.
We adopted a rescued cat that was found in a ditch with two surviving kittens and had been abandoned, and most recently in January, we adopted a 4 month old feral cat that had been trapped under a portable with three siblings.
When I brought him home I put him in an unused bedroom with litter and food and water. I would sit in a chair in the room for three or four hours a day. After a week he would come out to look at me, but not approach me. After another week he would approach me if I didn't try to touch him. A couple of weeks later he finally approached me and let me pet him. A week later he got up on my lap. I decided to let him have the run of the house and didn't see him for three days, then he ran up from the basement to his "safe" room. I left the door ajar to his room and he began to come out at night and get up on our bed to be petted, then during the day, and now he is like a normal sucky male cat except that he won't approach anyone but my wife and I and is startled easily. We named him Merlin because he can disappear himself instantly.