Stella the mascot
From Istaria Lexica
Stella has accompanied Terao and me all the time since we began creating the website in may 2015. She has had a hard fate before she found her home here in my rooms. Born in 2012, Stella has been taken away far too early from her mother and her siblings. Her new home must have been a hard place to live and after quite a few months the family fled from their living rooms without telling anyone (they must have been a kind of 'rental nomads'). Stella has been left alone in there, cut from the outer world. A friendly neighbor family, who owned three cats themselves, heard a cat crying whenever they passed by the door and they started to ponder. Talking to the caretaker ended up in the fact that the leavers went away for maybe more than a week without a word. They threw their keys into the caretaker's postal box and weren't seen anymore. Once freed, Stella appeared totally starved out. Just bones and some pelt were left. Poor kitty was not even able to eat normal food at the beginning and had to be nursed with liquids. She was heavily traumatised by then but got back to strength, step by step. Though she now got a better live in the new family there were still issues with the other cats. One of them loved to hunt down Stella without mercy and the two children, three years and four years old, couldn't leave her just alone all day. So the family decided to give her away and added some posts in local newspapers and some local facebook pet groups. At that time I was lurking the latter and found the 'call for help' together with Stella's first photo. On my visit she appeared very, very unsure about her surroundings. Two weeks later, when I collected her finally, she was hiding below a bed all day and never went out again. Her fears never settled down and will probably never do.
Coming to her new home was a heavy task. We had to drive almost two hours. Poor kitty didn't even know the two people (my dad and me) in that smelly car. She cried out loud because she couldn't find anything familiar there. At home I opened the box's door; she didn't want to move outside. While I was doing some housework I found out that she didn't like the noises I do. I tried to lure the small white hairball outside and had a success when I went down to the floor and tried to look small to her. I stood up as she sniffled my fingers, that made her flee under a very small desk. She didn't move from there for several hours. No chance on cat food, a luring human or even toys. I decided to take a nap in my bed, so there were no noises around (just my snore? I don't know.). My hope was the cat comes out of her hiding place, because her curiosity finally wins. Bingo. Two hours later I woke up. I looked at two orange-brown reflecting demon-eyes staring at me from a hiding place beside my wardrobe. I was shivering until I realised it was 'my' cat! That was very distracting. Throwing a finger in her direction invited her to jump onto the bed and have a chat with me. The ice was definately broken and it looked like Stella began to like her new home.
Stella is a small cat. Her wooly fur tells you she's a very cute one and yes, that's true. She makes you no harm even when playing. Biting and clawing is her hobby but she never does it seriously. She stays on 'love bites' at any time. Like most love seeking cats, it is obvious she is seeking your warmth very, very often. While working on Istaria Lexica (especially the programming parts), misses kitty very often managed to add a few bugs into the code by stepping all over my keyboard. On the other hand she also worked hard to remember me to go to bed, by settling down on my notebook's for example. Stella also tried to get into touch with certain gnomes over chat but came to the conclusion they can't understand any cat'ish. As I read the answer I found out I wouldn't understand gnomish either... Not good for such a big project if people can't understand each other, don't you think?
This video shows the first steps when Stella arrived at her new home.
I found something
This is my catwalk! Plan accordinly!
Good mornin'
I'm watching you
Cheese or milk?
My cooling box
Let's go biking
All mine!
Come in, this is funny!
