Posts Tagged ‘stray cat’
Cat Rehomed
After just one night of housing the friendly little stray, we found someone who wanted to claim the beautiful orange cat that showed up on our property. Cyndie was asked to help treat an ailing horse of a frequent This Old Horse volunteer and now friend, Michelle, first thing in the morning. In a whim of afterthought, upon completing the horse care, Cyndie brought up the story of this cat that showed up at our place.
When she showed Michelle pictures of the cat climbing on me, the reaction was instant. It looked just like Michelle’s beloved cat, which had died some months ago. She asked if she could come by later that morning to pick it up.
Done.
After checking with neighbors to confirm the cat was not one of theirs, we decided the affectionate feline was a possible victim of being dropped in the country to fend for itself. It was definitely not feral. A sad reality that is visited upon rural property owners with disgraceful regularity.
Asher seems to recognize that the cat has left the premises. He still checks mechanically on the scent around the hay shed, but without the manic fixation of the previous week.
I can’t deny that the purring ginger furball took a little piece of our hearts after just the briefest of encounters.
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Cat’s Back
After a day without sightings, the orange cat reappeared last night. In this instance, I was leaning against the hay shed door, waiting for the horses to finish eating their feed. Cyndie and Asher had returned to the house, so I was alone. Just as I took a step toward the barn, I heard a little mew.
My first thought was of the possibility that it was a new kitten because it sounded so small. I turned and stepped toward the spot where there is an obvious divot from critter traffic. Out popped the head of the orange cat.
I’m not certain, but I think it’s a female. She showed every indication of desiring my affection, so I gave her plenty.
After she crawled all over me, I decided to pick her up and walk to the neighbors up the hill and across the road. We arrived to find their orange cat (a little less orange than this one) sitting against their front door. At least I got verification that these are two different cats.
The neighbor’s cat didn’t bother to acknowledge our presence. Since there was no sign of animosity between the two, I set the dark orange stray down in their yard and started walking back to our place, hoping it would stay and the two of them would keep each other company.
I didn’t get very far when it became clear the stray was going to follow me all the way back. I sent Cyndie a photo of the cat on my lap and asked her to bring down a cat carrier. When I went into the barn to retrieve the feed buckets, the cat followed.
It wasn’t clear to me whether she had found Asher’s water dish while I was out with the horses, but when I tried to encourage her to drink, she showed no interest. She also turned up her nose to my offering of a few bites of the horses’ senior feed.
When Cyndie arrived with the carrier and a can of cat food, that cat became laser-focused and climbed right in to eat.
We decided to put her in the shop overnight, since it is heated. I had a tub and some cat litter stashed in there, so we set that up for her. Since Cyndie had posted on the Nextdoor app about this stray, she went back and left a note for one person who indicated interest if nobody else claimed the cat.
It behaved so affectionately with me; it’s a shame that Asher gets so riled up over cats. We’d be more inclined to give it a chance. I feel bad that nobody seems to be looking for her, since she shows every sign of not being a feral stray. We’ve had plenty of those paying visits to us, but their wild behaviors are very different from this little loverball.
I’ll follow up with details of how this plays out after we find an acceptable solution.
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Faint Dusting
We have officially received our first snow of the season overnight. With temperatures well below freezing, the flakes were dry enough that there was no threat of the horses getting wet, which is a relief. We hadn’t ended up putting blankets on them.
Cyndie did, however, put blankets on two of the evergreens in the labyrinth.
They are wrapped in burlap to protect them from freezer burn during the winter.
When I saw the wind chill was down in the single digits (F), I pulled out my quilted Carhartt overalls, which are a significant part of what I call my “spacesuit” against the winter conditions. It’s that time of year, I guess. I hardly needed them the last two years. Maybe this year will be different.
We have had an orange cat behaving more boldly about being on our property lately, which is putting Asher in a bit of a tracking frenzy. Two days ago, the cat showed up in our barn while Cyndie was down there to retrieve the feed buckets. Luckily, she had left Asher in the house on this occasion.
The cat kept meowing at Cyndie and approaching her, so she decided to walk toward the closest neighbor’s place to see if the cat would act like that was where it belonged.
Yesterday, the cat showed up again, this time while I was cleaning up manure among the horses, and Asher was watching behind the gates of the overhang.
When I spotted it and hollered to Cyndie in hopes of her confining Asher, the dog saw it, too. Chaos ensued.
Asher squeezed under the fence and raced toward the cat. The horses startled and took off in a sprint, just missing clobbering me. I hollered at the dog, Cyndie hollered, and the cat waited until Asher circled just enough for it to dash off for the nearest tree.
We succeeded in luring Asher away with the help of his e-collar, but the cat remained in that tree for long after.
Cyndie posted a notice on the Nextdoor app in search of a possible owner. She feels the cat was behaving less like an outdoor stray, of which there are many in the area, and more like an indoor cat with a relationship to people. I’m not equally convinced.
There was no sign of it this morning, so maybe Asher’s harsh confrontation was enough encouragement to persuade the cat to seek attention elsewhere. That would be great for my heart. Facing the possibility of getting trampled by the horses was a little more adrenaline than I care for first thing in the morning.
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Calm Existence
It is a blessing indeed to make it through a day with animals and a wife recovering from surgery and experience no unexpected drama. Maybe I am feeling particularly appreciative because the day before yesterday was noticeably less so.
Not surprisingly, the Siamese cat with the pretty blue collar showed up on our deck again. I figured a return visit was likely given the way the neighbor’s big Pyrenees guard dog chased after the kitty when I returned it the first time. We chose to pay it no attention in hopes it would return home on its own.
All was going well, in terms of our ignoring it until Delilah got up from a nap and went ballistic over the presence of the uninvited feline visitor. I don’t know what it is about this cat that the dogs become so worked up over while other cats nearby walk around unnoticed.
Ultimately, the plan appears to have worked because there was no sign of the Siamese anywhere yesterday. I didn’t want to do anything that might invite continued future visits.
I also didn’t see the barn cat that we thought might be living in our hay shed, but I wondered if it might be hiding in there somewhere and had possibly been near a skunk. The unwelcome aroma was vague but present when I opened the big door to the shed. Something about the presence of the odor led me to believe it wasn’t coming directly from a skunk. Seemed more believable that it was a “second-hand” stink.
It was time yesterday afternoon to move more bales to the barn, even though there are moments when the horses are showing more interest in biting the fence boards than eating more hay this time of year. They loiter near the fence to the pastures and hope I will notice and give them what they want.
Cyndie has approved a plan I devised yesterday to rig up a way to allow them access to the round pen later today. With little activity in there the last few years, grass has overtaken the sand. It would be just fine with us if they grazed that grass down to nothing like they are doing in the paddocks.
That should buy us a little time of entertaining their cravings until we deem the grass in the back pasture ready for being stomped on and eaten. The first day they get on that tall grass, they will only have 15-30 minutes to munch. Access will be granted after they have already eaten the morning or evening servings, so they don’t feel overly hungry in the moment.
Each day their time on the pasture will be increased by 15-30 minutes. The microbes that inhabit a horse’s gut vary depending on what is being eaten. We want to allow time for the microbial population to change in balance with the new green grass being offered.
They’ll be excited enough as it is to be grazing in the pasture. We don’t want to spoil the otherwise calm existence by introducing new digestive problems.
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Friendly Visitor
We knew instantly that there was a visitor on our deck by Delilah’s reaction. I spotted the good-looking Siamese running by the door in our bedroom as Delilah bolted to the living room doors to fire up her most ferocious outburst at the scary beast threatening her sovereignty.
The cutie had a collar on which differentiated it from the multitude of other roaming cats that regularly cross our territory, so I stepped outside to get acquainted. Cyndie is a day away from knee replacement surgery and under quarantine since testing clean from the possibility of Covid infection, so she missed out on all the affection.
The lovely blue-eyed kitty was instantly passionate about rubbing against me. Surely, someone should be missing this feline companion. Cyndie brought some water and a serving of dry cat food for me to offer. Water isn’t hard to find outdoors around here, but the crunchy morsels drove the cat wild. I worried that eating too much too fast would risk not keeping it all down long enough to digest. The cat did not share my concern.
Cyndie posted pictures on Next Door but I assumed the stray must be from one of the immediately surrounding properties and haven’t seen any of those neighbors using the app. I set the friendly visitor up with accommodations in the shop while we waited and pondered our next move.
On one of my visits to check on the kitty it made a leap up to my shoulder and cuddled me as if begging us to let it stay forever. That helped to nudge me toward surveying the surrounding properties sooner than later. The only valid phone number I had was for the neighbor to our immediate south.
It wasn’t his and he wasn’t able to get me the phone number of the folks across the street from him. I was going to need to put the kitty in a crate and go for a drive. The woman across the street from him feeds cats outdoors and on the one occasion we traveled up their driveway ten years ago we spotted ten or more cats wandering their yard around the house upon a hill.
They are a particularly recluse couple so making my second trip up their driveway since we’ve lived here felt rather intrusive. It took several minutes to get a response from my knocking. I was making my way around the house to a different door when I heard a man’s voice calling out.
Wasn’t their cat. They don’t put any collars on the cats that show up to be fed. He suggested I check the property up the road and around the corner.
Another driveway I’ve never entered. Folks around these parts tend to keep to themselves. If we didn’t interact with them in the first year or two, we’ve pretty much never talked with them since. No response from that house.
As long as I was already on that street I decided to check the next driveway up because that farm’s land stretches all the way to our woods on the north and west property lines. Thankfully, he was already outside talking with someone in a pickup.
Twas their collared Siamese.
We stood and chatted at length amidst his excess of pickups and farm machinery while dogs, cats, chickens, and ducks all circled around us. There were goats inside a fence, more dogs in a kennel, and a couple of geese honked as they took flight. The very scruffy-looking Pyrenees guard dog took immediate notice of the possibility the geese needed protection and headed in that direction.
That very same dog seems to get along with all the farmyard tenants except one beautiful Siamese cat. I witnessed a chase around the obstacles that left me thinking I understand why the cat might be interested in getting away.
Something about that ever so affectionate and beautiful cat seems to stir a similar reaction from both Delilah and their Pyrenees.
By the way, he got the dog because foxes were getting his chickens.
Hmm.
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Trapping Failures
I thought it would be easy. We watched for a couple of weeks while a pest company trapped eleven raccoons just beyond the net fencing around our chicken coop. I monitored the location with my trail camera and was present to witness how they baited their traps. We provided our trap for their use to increase the chances and it snagged at least one of the eleven, so I know it works.
Since that time, there have been more occasions when it didn’t trip than when it did. One time, a wandering cat cleaned up all the bait without pulling the trigger on the hatch.
Two nights in a row, we overlooked turning the camera back on, losing the chance to see who has been stopping by. Well, one of those nights this cat did trip the latch and got itself trapped, but I didn’t get to see when, or how, or whether any other critters came along before or after.
On Sunday night there wasn’t a single overnight event to trigger the camera. Seems strange to me, except that it successfully captured two pictures of me closing the coop just after I turned it on for the night. After that, nothing.
Yesterday morning, Cyndie reported evidence of lots of shenanigans around the coop overnight. When I got home from work and checked the memory card, there were 83 images throughout the night. The adult and juvenile raccoon were back after days of not seeing them.
Unfortunately, I had not set out the trap for them. It had been relocated to the hay shed where a woodchuck/groundhog has been making daily appearances.
It’s a lot like a game of Whack-a-Mole.
But if I didn’t have any trapping failures, it wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding when we finally do enjoy a little random success.
Meanwhile, we heard a lone coyote howling just after sunset the other night.
Aahhh, country life.
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Kitty Homed
The result is in. Despite breaking Cyndie’s heart in handing off our little surprise visitor last week, the sweet kitty that peeked in our back door is now happily placed in a new home.
None of our neighbors reported missing a pet and our trusted pet-sitter, Anna, just happened to be looking for a kitty to fulfill the request of a friend. It was a match that fit seamlessly for all parties concerned.
One reply we received from a neighbor gave us pause. She texted, “Is this the first pet you’ve had abandoned on your property?”
We’ve been here eight years now, and this was a first. Her question implies it is something that happens with some regularity in the country. We are happy to have been spared this harsh reality of human behavior thus far.
Our attention is back on fifteen chickens who are busy learning how to deal with the increasingly wintery weather, as well as their own pecking order. We feel lucky to have avoided any real violence from the aggressors, but they do assert their dominance as anticipated. Happily, the young ones are not looking defeated by it in the least. They continue to ever so slowly expand their comfort zone of free-ranging our land.
In this time of the exploding COVID-19 cases, take advantage of the healthy excuse to stay home and hug your pets.
Except for free-ranging chickens. They aren’t so fond of that hugging thing.
Just throw them some scratch or mealworms and they’ll feel truly loved.
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Peeping Kitty
Monday afternoon, leaning back in my favorite recliner, my eye sensed movement out on our deck. Was that a very large squirrel that just went past the glass door? Nope. Soon, a cute little kitten was peeping in at us with a look that strongly hinted at coming from one who preferred the indoors to the wintery temperatures this October has been serving up.
Cyndie stepped out on the deck to do a little grilling and soon showed up outside the door with that bundle of cute curled up in her hands.
It quickly turned into a rescue operation. Now we have a converted chick brooder tub housing the adorable visitor under temporary quarantine in the somewhat heated shop outbuilding.
According to Cyndie’s reports, the little bugger displayed a voracious appetite for foodstuffs offered. A post with photo was created for the online neighborhood group in search of a possible owner. Phone calls to immediately adjacent properties brought no positive identifications. It’s hard to picture this little one traveling over the large rural expanses beyond visible neighbors to reach our door, but we are guessing that is the situation.
Last night we received a reply from the wider online neighborhood saying, “Let me know if she needs a home,” so we have that solution awaiting the possibility nobody else shows up to report having lost her.
Meanwhile, although she says she is putting in a bold effort to not fall in love, I sense Cyndie is already past that point.
Pretty much saw it when she arrived at the deck door with the kitty curled up in her hands.
The resolution of this peeping kitty unexpectedly sheltering with us is unscripted. Feel free to place your bets on the eventual outcome.
I’ll provide follow-up details as the adventure unfolds.
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Relative Something 