E Friday and cats

Looks like it’s cat day here today. Up in Portland our granddaughter E picked out a kitten a few weeks ago. I understand it is a very friendly cat, wanting to hang around its people all the time.


Evidently Portland is a city known to be animal friendly. They had to fill out all kids of forms and have an interview before being deemed good enough to adopt an animal from one of the shelters. This kitty was not from a shelter but from an individual that had several kittens available, all raised inside with people contact so they were rather friendly.

At our house we have been having interactions with a number of feral cats lately. One female that has been coming by for years had a new litter of four back in the Spring and kept bringing them through the yard. They may have been living in the back corner behind our shed since we saw them so often (prompting B to try and schedule a cleanup of that corner of the yard). At one point she seemed to take off with three of them, leaving the smallest behind. B started feeding it, bringing the dish closer to the house, and sitting outside when the kitten came around. Eventually she moved it inside and we now have a new cat ourselves. As for the rest, we borrowed some capture cages from the local ASPCA chapter and ended up catching five feral cats including momma, her three kittens and one big male we had never seen before. A local agency offers free neutering/spaying for feral cats, so they all went through the procedure and were released back in the yard.

Ours is not nearly as friendly as E’s, being a feral cat for the first few weeks of its life. But it has gotten fairly acceptable to us, but still runs away when you move on it too fast. B is home all day with the cat, so it has gotten more friendly with her than with me, the stranger that comes in at night. Last week when B was touching up the trim paint in the kitchen and found that she had a supervisor. This cat is part Siamese, with the crossed blue eyes and love of jumping and being on high places. So of course she wanted the top step. B had a problem when painting the baseboard, the cat was very helpful and kept making sure the paint was drying properly, resulting in little painted kitty paw prints around the house. When painting up high she is content to just insure the job is being done properly.


And the name? Granddaughter picked out the name for our kitten, Puck, from a book she was reading. Her cat is named Myrhh, because it goes so well with purr.

Cats

We have several cats that wander through our yard. A few can be attributed to neighbors, but some appear to be feral cats, just living off the land. One in particular is a regular visitor, we’ve been seeing it for three or four years now, it likes to come and sit under the bushes near the back door and watch our bird feeder. I would much rather have birds than cats, but one seems to attract the other.

Last year this one had a single kitten, and they were in the yard daily. Eventually they left and we didn’t see them for several months, but a few months ago the older female showed up again. Back in mid-May B was looking out the window and saw this group:


That’s mom lying in the grass with four kittens playing around. We once came home and mom cat ran across the driveway with a big white Siamese, who we assume is the father. A nice assortment of kittens, two the same grey striped as mom, one black and one white like dad. A very good example of how genetics and inheritance works.

The kittens seemed big enough to be eating on their own, and once in a while B put out some food, which they all ate. As expected mom soon started parceling out the kittens, I guess they grow up and have to be pushed away. It ended up that the white one was left in our back yard, a nice safe area where food periodically showed up. So B rose to the challenge and started leaving out food, and moving the food dish closer to our back door.


And what was the end result? Of course, exactly what you expected:


She is a typical Siamese, blue crossed eyes, and she jumps a lot, and for $147 the vet said she is quite healthy. I would much rather have a little dog, which is a lot easier to control. But now she has slowly started turning into a lap cat (on her terms of course) and bats around the toys (and whatever else is around). We’ve got wooden blinds on the back doors, which she really likes using as ladders. Last night she made it up into the bookcases in my office, and eventually will be up to jumping on the kitchen counters. One thing I really don’t like about cats, I’d rather have my food to myself. Oh well, as long as my wife doesn’t turn into the crazy neighborhood cat lady.