Down on the farm - feral cats
I feel like I am on Green Acres some times....!
So we have these two feral cats, Tiger (orange tabby) and Sweetie Pie (mean lil snip of a manx). Tiger has become accustomed to us and will stay for visits. Sweetie only stops by as we are a food source.
Any way, we have been having some fierce rain storms lately and they have been hanging near the house for shelter. When we get home, we put out cat food - wet and dry in their bowls. Tiger runs in, gulps his and runs out. The sign that he has a kill waiting outside. O joy.....
Sure enough, moments later, he comes back with a small mouse in his mouth. And he is a little wet from the downpour. He stops at the door and meows, asking permission to come in with his after-dinner snack. He is well-mannered for a feral cat.
Tiger has done this before with a "treat" and would put the item in his bowl to eat. This time, he puts the critter on his beach towel. Gil walks over to congratulate Tiger and the critter runs off!! Well, so much for OUR dinner. At this point, people would scream or laugh. We just looked at each other - what just happened!!!!
The mouse (a good 3 inch body) makes for a baseboard and runs with Tiger playing tag on it. It makes it to a corner of the built-in bookcase. And yes, you guessed it - crawls up into a hole that is at the baseboard to the bookcase and escapes. Now we have one pissy feral cat in the library. Lucky, we don't have furniture! So Tiger ain't moving from his spot as he lay in wait for the mouse to come back out. Like THAT will happen. (all the while Gil and I are yelling at each other - "get the mouse!" "you get it" "get a broom!")
So he comes over to me and whines like I can help. So I go over to the corner, get down on the floor and stare at the corner. I get the latest Newsweek magazine and read it with Tiger keeping watch. I go and get fine steel wool from the garage while Gil takes over corner watching duty with Tiger.
The Gil goes to Tiger's bowl and offers a kitty treat morsel to lure Tiger away. Then I go plug the hole in the corner baseboard so Tiger doesn't know.
He was still monitoring the corner this morning when we got up. We put him outside with a suggestion to not play with his food.
Good things cats forget in a couple of days. It would be too sad to see him sitting at that corner waiting. And waiting.
Moral: wait until after the floor show to have your dinner.
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