Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Feral Cats

We have a cat here at our place. We live in what the rest of the world may call the "boonies". Our nearest town is only four miles away, but it's a couple miles of gravel to get out, and that town only has the main streets paved. Our grocery store would fit many times into a regular city grocery store. Before you begin to think I am a bumpkin never having left the country, please know, I have lived in and visited some very large cities both in this country and others. Oh yeah, back to the cat.....This cat, here on the farm, was as feral (wild for the lefties here) as you can imagine. She was always dragging dead things up on the front porch to eat. Anyone that would come near would get a horrific hiss followed by the waving flag of her tail as she ran away. If you attempted to touch her and she was cornered, you were most definitely going to bleed. That was a guarantee!You see, she was a pilgrim on our place. This cat was a free spirit. Living on her own and surviving just fine.She made a mistake, however. She let my wife and I (with good intentions) tempt her by leaving food out every night. You see, we thought it would be good to have a "mouser" around our new country place. And it was great that she was independent. We could go away for the weekend and not worry about our "stray" cat.Well, this cat, two years later is nothing but the regular old house cat that you are used to seeing. It is completely dependent upon us. We feed it every meal now. It rubs against us and gets under foot constantly hoping for a little bonus morsel or scratch on the head. I can't remember the last time I saw her hunting mice in the pasture. She just had kittens, and they are living comfortably in the garage without a care in the world. A new dependent generation has been born. They will never learn their food comes from the animals outside the house.Its an amazing parallel isn't it? Theirs happened quicker, but it happened just the same. I just really, really, hope there is a wild one in that bunch of kittens that I can relate to.

Until next time, keep your powder dry and your eyes open.

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