And this one is really touching our hearts.  :<

The little black and white girl from across the street always comes for a
hand-out of the "good stuff" (left-overs of what our cats don't eat).  She
has never been spayed, unfortunately - her "owners" seem to find the money
for everything else but her - so occasionally there are toms hanging around
our yard also.

About a week ago Socks (which we call her even though her owners call her
"Nibbles") came pawing at our back door asking for snackies.  As soon as we
put some Science Diet dry outside (we stopped feeding ours dry so we had a
lot to give away and did until it was gone), she backed off and allowed one
of her "suitors" to eat.  There was this starved-looking orinj-stripey boy
who proceeded to gobble up every last kibble from the bowl - and all of the
kibble from THREE bowlsfull when we kept refilling the bowl.  Orinj-stripey
knew he'd hit the jackpot, so he stuck around.

For the first few days he shied away every time we opened the back door, but
once he saw that we weren't going to hurt him, and continued to feed him, he
became bolder and soon allowed us to pet him (even rolling over on his back
so we could give him tummy rubs).  This pretty much proves our guess that he
was someone's pet whom they just dumped in the neighborhood (an all too
frequent occurrence here).

We don't usually touch outside cats for fear of bringing some unwanted virus
into our clowder, but this little boy was so needy that we just gave in and
put the Purell on the table next to the door so we could disinfect our hands
when we came inside from a petting.

Now, we are *SO* strapped financially that we're having a hard time feeding
our own crew.  There is no way on this earth we could add a sixth cat to our
clowder.  We are being hounded by bill collectors and on the verge of having
utilities shut off.  I do without lunches eaten out, we've cancelled our
cable, etc., etc., and we're still short every single month.  I'm sure you
all know what that's like.

So.... we can't afford to take him to the vet for neutering or testing, and
we can't afford to buy him the food ours eat.  We've done the most we can at
the moment - we bought Purina Cat Chow dry for him (and give him the
leftovers of the canned food our own clowder eats), give him clean fresh
water and a safe place to stay (we have a 6 foot wooden fence around our
yard).

He is the sweetest little boy cat you can imagine, so we're going to try to
find a home for him.  We'd be willing to transport him a reasonable distance
from our home.  So if you, or someone you know, is in the Houston area and
want a sweet little orinj-stripey boy, please let me know.  Until then I'm
just hoping he'll be OK in our backyard.