Poor Sprite was obviously terrified when he arrived and he would have done anything to hide (the top left photos).
He managed to squeeze out the bottom of his new-cat cage in his desperation to hide and he bashed his face up in the process. You can just make out the scars on his face in the bottom left photo.
Now he is at last a calm and contented cat as you can see in the photo on the right.
Sprite came to Katie's Place at the end of July 2009 from someone who had been looking after him for about a year. He had begun hanging around the person's house and eventually moved indoors. But he could be unpleasant to the person's own cats and he began peeing outside the litter pan. Clearly the personalities were incompatible which meant Sprite had to go. (He's fine among the cats in his room at the shelter.) The person learned that Sprite had been altered as part of a feral colony by another small rescue group. He must have wandered away from that colony and tried to join the person's household. He was never feral. But he's probably enjoyed very little time as a loved family member in his life. He can be very timid and fearful as though he's learned to expect bad things of humans. Yet once he realizes you want to be his friend, he's very sweet and affectionate. He's just a sensitive, lonely fellow. But being plain black, introverted and not the handsomest cat means his chances of adoption are remote.