The only one I can recall, which may have been repeated in the list, was something about feeding them.
[Aha! Found it! http://www.xmission.com/~emailbox/strays.htm ]
And yes, my friends no longer have a stray cat. Instead, Elvis is the master of the house now. (Well, he was till the kitten came. Now they sometimes take turns. Some days she lets him be master again!)
Our current trio of tossers weren’t stray cats, but they were the offspring of a stray cat. Or perhaps I should say, a “dumped” cat. We don’t so much get stray cats here as we get abandoned cats. Sad truth.
There was John Thomas or Hamish, a gorgeous big orange fellow. Who announced his arrival by getting his head stuck in a tin can from the recycle box and cycloning around in the garage, never touching the ground, while trying to get his head out. It was an impressive entrance! He was an amazingly nice boy. He stayed here for a week or so, and about the time we were thinking we might just talk ourselves into keeping him, he moved on. I think we were always a bit sad about that.
There was a lovely little tabbyish cat, who made her entrance by excavating through a partially constructed wall, (we’d been planning a doorway), and joining us in bed, purring. I eventually found her a home with a co-worker in the city.
There was another cat another time, who eventually got trod on by a cow, and had to be put down.
There was a charming, very young, ocelotish kitten, who fortuitously got adopted by one of the other families in the neighbourhood. (Meaning NOT by us!) George, our next door farmer has taken in countless abandoned cats. And there was Miss Kitty, who arrived here in 1999, I assume abandoned because she’d gone into heat, which turned her from someone’s amusing little pet into a responsibility. Sadly, not yet wise to the ways of the world, she got herself in the “family way”, and eventually gave birth to our crowd.
We’d joked with our neighbour that whoever’s yard she had the kittens in, would take them. However, David’s stepdaughter was extremely allergic to cats. So, when Miss Kitty had her kittens under one of his shrubs, we generously hunted them down and brought them back to our place.
We found Miss Kitty a home, and a home for one of the four kittens, (there’d been five, but one was too fragile to make it). We thought we found a home for the third, but they brought him back! Husband didn’t want to shut his dog up for the two weeks it might take to introduce a cat.
[We’re now just realizing how lucky we were that the nice lady brought the kitten back, five hours worth of driving the round trip, and didn’t just dispose of him down there in some way.]
And of course, none of these cats ever arrived at a time when we weren’t already being owned by several cats. In fact, I don’t know that my husband and I have ever been single cat owners, while we’ve been together. It’s always been cats. Plural.
So, bringing in a new cat is not an easy decision, and definitely not a peaceful task, once the decision has been made.
And now there’s another one. Been here a week now. No-one seems to know anything about her. (I’m thinking “her”, but ever since I made a mistake about the sex of one of the kittens, I’m a bit less sure.) And she’s actually kind of distinctive; she’s a polydactyl cat. She has thumbs! Her front feet are like mittens. But none of the local vets have a mitten cat as a patient. No-one’s responded to any of the posters or notices. She’s a (mostly) well-behaved, extremely friendly, gentle cat. And pretty.
The Poly-puss[That’s the odd thing about all the abandoned cats: they’ve all been the most desirable of cats. Attractive, friendly, clean, good-natured. But, I guess, just not cute kittens anymore.]
Now, we already have three cats. That’s a lot of cats. One of the things that’s made it work out alright is that they’re all siblings. So they’re the same age, and more or less the same level of energy. Bear likes Charv. Charv likes Bear. Charv likes Lily, and Lily likes Charv. Lily hates Bear some of the time, because he picks on her. But he does it in a good-natured way. She’s just his little sister, and that’s what she’s there for! But they’re the three most good-natured and endearing cats that I’ve ever lived with in my entire life of living with cats!
And I really don’t want to upset the status quo.
Not to mention that another cat means another vet bill. More cat food. More cat litter. More cats to worry about. More cats to share the bed with. (Oh no!)
But then, when she wasn’t out in the workshop last evening when I went to bed, I worried. And was glad when she was back again this morning.
Sigh. We’re such suckers!
Charv and Bear
Lily
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