Maron, who is well known from his stand-up appearances on "The Late Show with David Letterman," and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," has kept feral cats as pets for five years. His fans are familiar with them through the stories he's told on his radio shows for Air America; in his act (including an extended bit on his most recent comedy album, "Final Engagement"); and on the new podcast he launched on September 1, "WTF with Marc Maron."
In honor of National Feral Cat Day, Maron spoke with Paw Nation about some of the challenges of keeping feral cats, and why it's all worth it.
When did you adopt your feral cats?
I think I got them in July of 2004 or so.
What happened when you took them in? In your act, you describe them living outside your apartment in Queens.
When I got the cats, I didn't know that they were feral, and I didn't know what that meant. They were kittens. They were all eating out of the garbage. And I guess I should have known something because I trapped them in boxes with food. But I didn't realize that they were all wild already, even at that young an age. They're never going to be completely domesticated.
Were you able to recognize that in their personalities?
I recognized it in their personalities because none of them liked me. They wouldn't let me touch them; they would bite me; they would claw me. They all scattered and hid in different places. Monkey tried to jump out a window and wedged himself between the screen and the window. Two of them were stuck behind the stove for days. LaFonda, she's got, like, PTSD and I think it's because when she first got into my apartment, she got stuck on a glue trap. She was freaking out, and I was freaking out because she didn't like me and I had to rip her off this glue trap, and she scratched up my hands. I really think that scarred her mentally.
I started talking about it on the radio, and people started getting in touch with me. Cat ladies, 40-to-60-year-old women who hate humanity. One of them lent me a cage. One of them came over and we trapped the mother, and she brought that in to get fixed. She brought a syringe over and inoculated these kittens. And then she took one of the kittens that we hadn't trapped yet. It was a fiasco.
So which of the original four feral kittens do you have now?
I have Monkey and LaFonda. I gave one to a cat lover, and that one's well taken care of. The one that was really out of control, I gave to the deli across the street to be a mouser.
Time-Lapse Tortoise Noms Salad
