Wednesday - 159th

Well now, it looks like I have to do a post titled "seniors, rural living and feral cats." Reading a couple of your comments on our two little kitties tells me that these topics are not necessarily self evident.

First of all, for those who do not live in rural homes, here's something that perhaps you don't know: feral cats are part of your daily life here. Some cats come only once, some come occasionally, some choose to linger. Some, like the great matriarch Stop Sign, come, deliver a few babies and then disappear again.

Now, I don't pass judgment on those who choose not to feed feral cats. There are many reasons not to do it. Many reasons. Attracting wildlife, depleting the bird population are just two. Everyone has to decide what's right for them.

With so many feral cats out there (we have a new one this week! orange! very pretty!), you know for sure that it is in everyone's interest to spay as many as you can. But this can be so tough (we have a number of scratch and even bite marks to prove it) that again, I surely don't blame those who don't even try. We avoided it until Stop Sign brought us yet another littler, within half a year of the previous one. We had to get the cages and give it a go.

Trapping all the ones that are part of her extended family, and finally trapping Stop Sign herself was nearly impossible. Ed's calm smarts and steady hand were what made this a success. I could not have done it on my own.

Okay, so we spayed them. All of them. And vaccinated them. And fed them. And they were still so young and they were not well after the operation and winter was coming. So we gave them the sheep shed, which is really a finished workshop and we trained them to come in and out of there at their will. It's grand for them, but again, it wasn't an easy decision. They bring in guts of mice, they regurgitate, they mess the place up terribly. Still, winter was coming and they were young. Ed had experience with this stuff by virtue of his work with two feral cats from before my days.

All was fine until the final generation of Stop Sign's kitties came along. The older guys ("the teens") feel bossy. They mess with them.  And so we have a situation where the older six have a comfy place to hide in the winter, food delivered to them twice a day, and the younger two have food delivered surreptitiously, under a car, and if they linger, they often get chased away.

People who haven't been around feral cats don't get that these animals, unless domesticated very early and unless their personalities are on the mellow side (Dance, the only one from Stop Sign's oldest litter, is mellow), they're not suited for indoor life. They want to be outside, even though it's not a hospitable world out there. Their instinct is to be suspicious of movement, of kids, of noise. They can be attached to you (by now, all eight cats are in some fashion attached to us), but still run like crazy the minute you introduce something that to them is strange.

Finally, you cannot assume that every time a sick cat shows up and you provide some care to that cat (I wont tell you how incredibly expensive it was to take Calico to the ER vet hospital last week), you are now binding yourself to bring that cat inside your house. Not everyone on this planet should have children. (I know too many that did have children for all the wrong reasons. Good people, just not good parenting material.) So too, not every person (especially not every senior person, who happens also to have little children running around) should take in a wild animal into her home. Even if that wild animal wants to follow you inside your home.

End of lecture.

Having said that, Calico and Cutie could do well with people who have had experience with cats. We handed over two feral kitties from an earlier litter to a friend of mine and the cats are doing fabulously! Calico is very small and pretty mellow (and thus terrified of the teens -- she wont stand up to them, she runs!). Cutie and she are terrific with each other. So, here's a photo from today's session of playing with Calico (Ed's actually combing her hair...).






If you think you know someone who has experience with cats and who wants to give it a try, get in touch with me. We will take the girls back if they don't work out for you (they've been spayed and they've had their rabies vaccination).


In other news -- well, it's a beautiful day once more. A porch day.






A "fix the garden" day.


























A kids are back day!

I offer them a morning of picking flowers in the meadow. This time I bring scissors so that whole plants aren't pulled out. My photos are all from those minutes in the young orchard.





















I suppose I should give this a "running" theme: both kids practiced their saunter -- to the meadow, then back to the farmhouse. What a surprise -- Snowdrop always beat Sparrow to the destination.
















In the evening, Ed bikes, I water a bit of the garden out front. I just can't keep looking at all those yellowing nasturtium leaves.

And then I catch up with my little grandgirl in Chicago!






I reheat the frittata and wait for my guy to come home and cook up some pop corn. Because you know, there's no way I can make pop corn all by myself!