House Guests

Rob and Katy discovered a family of kitties yesterday evening. The mother cat has been roaming about the neighborhood for a few weeks. Our neighbor, Charlotte, took to feeding her eventually, and I guess that was enough hospitality to convince her to move her newborns to a spot behind some stacked boards next to our garage. The kittens have only just opened their eyes, and they wobble when they attempt to walk. Rob moved some of the plywood and found a cardboard box into which he put an old blanket to make a better nest for the young family as they were living on a bed of rock. We haven’t seen any posters up for a lost cat, so the mother could be local or, more likely, abandoned in the near past as she is very tame. She will eat right out of your hand and comes when you call her. Katy has been lobbying for a pet for over a year now. She has stepped up her efforts a bit since we moved up here, but we have held her off with time vague promises of a pet sometime in the future. The main reason for this is that she is too young to really take care of an animal. That would fall to me, and Rob is worried that I wouldn’t take to it well. Also, Rob is a tiny bit happy to be pet-free after years of cats and dogs. Jordan took the last animal, her cat Tigger, with her when she moved this last June. Another cat, Nike, and a yellow lab named Loki live in the city with Farron. One of Katy’s arguments for a pet is that she is the only sister who doesn’t have a cat. Nothing escapes that child’s notice and she can be quite clever. She began one of her pet campaigns by sitting Rob down one day and saying in a calm, matter of fact way, “ Can we talk about a dog?” She would be happy with either a cat or a dog, but for the moment she is leaning more towards dog because she is convinced they would play with her more. This was pre-kittens though. The gray mama has already seemed to have decided to call our yard home. The kittens will probably go feral at some point without intervention. Rob isn’t inclined to intervene much beyond the home he fashioned for them and some leftover cat food in a leftover dog dish for the mama. Fate has its own ideas though I have come to realize, and certainly a sense of humor that you can appreciate or resent depending on your world view. Nothing is decided, but, for the moment, we have cats.
1 Comment Manage Comments for this Entry