{"id":6519,"date":"2012-11-03T18:46:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T23:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=6519"},"modified":"2012-11-03T20:16:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-04T01:16:07","slug":"sigh-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/6519","title":{"rendered":"(Sigh)…Cats…!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She’s an adorable little calico and she’s feral so she won’t let anyone get too close. \u00a0 But for several years now she’s been lurking around my street<\/a> and occasionally visiting Casa del Garrett, to check the menu around the bird feeders, and every now and then catching something. \u00a0 I keep the feeders well off the ground, in part to keep city rats from getting into them and in part to keep little calico cats away from the customers, though I suppose she, and the occasional hawk, also consider themselves that. \u00a0 I’d rather she left my birds alone. \u00a0 But she is the most amazing hunter I’ve ever seen and part of me respects professionalism in every endeavor.<\/p>\n

And bravery. \u00a0 I watched one day as she stalked up to the edge of a fenced in yard that usually contains two very large dogs. She would have been a bite sized snack for either one but cat sense must be far superior to spider sense as she seemed to know even though she could not see the entire yard from street level that the dogs weren’t in there. \u00a0 But a small flock of birds was, feeding on some seed that had been put out. I watched her suddenly leap over the fence, run up the hill, run back down and back over the fence and across the street with a small bird in her mouth. It happened that quick. \u00a0 Another time I was serenely watching the birds at my feeders from just inside my front door and she suddenly leaped over the top step (where you see her sitting in that photo) and tried to snag one of the birds that were inadvisedly ground feeding there. \u00a0 What caught my attention was when she made her sudden leap her front claws were striking in the air above the sidewalk, not where the birds were, but where she knew they would be. \u00a0 That time she missed but was close…one of those birds must have felt the whiff of air as a claw passed by. \u00a0 I have seen the occasional feathery left overs scattered around my walkway. \u00a0 Usually it was a pigeon. \u00a0 She can have all of those she wants.<\/p>\n

In a heartbeat I’d take her in, but as I said she’s feral and those cats will never accept human companionship. But somebody has been watching out for her because her coat is usually very clean and well kept and one ear is clipped (you can barely see it in this photo) which means at some point someone scooped her up and took her to the vet to be spayed and given her shots). I’m guessing the city doesn’t mind at least some feral cats prowling about, provided they’ve been spayed\/neutered and topped off with anti-rabies, as they’ll help keep the rodent population in check. \u00a0 And at least until recently someone must have been feeding her. \u00a0 Good as she is hunting, I don’t think that’s enough to account for the her overall good condition. Most ferals I’ve seen looked pretty tattered. \u00a0 He coat is always shiny and clean. \u00a0 Or at least it was until recently.<\/p>\n

In the weeks before Sandy hit I noticed she seemed a bit…disheveled. \u00a0 Her coat had started to look a bit…worn. \u00a0 And she seemed tired all the time. \u00a0 She’s been around the neighborhood for some years now and I thought perhaps age was beginning to set in. \u00a0 Or maybe one of the other ferals around here had bullied her out of her place wherever she was getting food and shelter. \u00a0 Or maybe the crazy older lady everyone in the neighborhood suspects is feeding the strays had stopped for some reason. \u00a0 I hadn’t seen the woman around her house for a while. \u00a0 She’s easy to spot when she goes for her walks. \u00a0 She’s the one who always wears a heavy winter coat when she goes for her walks, even in a brutal heat wave. \u00a0 She has family that stops by regularly and I began to wonder if maybe they’d finally taken her away.<\/p>\n

So I began to worry about the little calico. \u00a0 Then Sandy barreled in. \u00a0 During the worst of the storm I caught a glimpse of the calico huddled in the basement window sill and I felt frustrated I couldn’t just bring her inside. \u00a0 But any move I might have made toward her just then she would have bolted into the storm which would have only made matters worse. \u00a0 So I let her be, afraid the next morning I’d find a little dead kitty in front of my basement window. \u00a0 But somehow she survived it. \u00a0 Maybe she moved on to wherever it is she normally beds down for the night. \u00a0 There are crawl spaces under some of the houses, and somewhere under one of those maybe there would be shelter and heat. \u00a0 I have no idea. \u00a0 All I know is after the hurricane she was gone, but later the next day she showed up again. \u00a0 And the next day I did something I swore I wouldn’t. \u00a0 I put some food out for her. \u00a0 I knew the moment I did that I was making a commitment I wasn’t sure I wanted to be making. But I did it. \u00a0 It was the sight of her huddled wet in the basement window sill and I couldn’t do anything but hope she wasn’t going to die of exposure.<\/p>\n

A couple days later after work I got a distinctively colored and shaped bowl out of my kitchen cabinets and put it on the basement window sill where I’d seen her during the hurricane. \u00a0 It had one of the cans of tuna from my winter pantry. \u00a0 I had about a half dozen of them I knew I wasn’t going to finish by the sell by dates on them, so I figured they weren’t going to waste if I gave them to the cat. \u00a0 The next morning I saw the bowl had been eaten from, and I hoped it was her and not a city rat that got into it. \u00a0 I brought it inside and cleaned it out. \u00a0 I had a plan.<\/p>\n

The next day when I came home from work she was there on my front steps. \u00a0 The front steps are one of her usual perches where she stalks my birds. \u00a0 I spoke to her and she moved away, but not too far. \u00a0 I went inside, got the bowl out, put another can of tuna in it and walked outside to where she could see me. \u00a0 When she saw the bowl her face lit up. \u00a0 There was a reason I picked that particular oddly shaped and colored bowl. \u00a0 Seeing me holding it she could make a connection between it and me. \u00a0 I put it down on the basement window sill, and nearby on the front porch, a smaller bowl of water. \u00a0 Then I went inside, walked down to my basement art room and peeked under the curtain in front of the basement window. \u00a0 There she was, eating. \u00a0 When she was done, she moved away and I came back upstairs and took the bowl back inside. \u00a0 I don’t want to be feeding all the neighborhood cats, let alone the city rats. \u00a0 Just her.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later I walked back outside. \u00a0 It was Halloween night and I wanted to put up some decorations and attract some goblins. \u00a0 As I was stringing some lights on the front steps rail, she came out from under one of the cars parked on the street, walked closer to me on the sidewalk then she ever did, still well out of arm’s reach…sat down…and stared right at me for a time, never taking her eyes off me, like she was sizing me up. \u00a0 For a good five minutes she did that, as I tried talking a calming patter to her while I was stringing lights. \u00a0 Then she seemed to shrug, and walked away. \u00a0 The next day, promptly after work, she was sitting on my front steps, waiting.<\/p>\n

So now we have a routine going. \u00a0 And her coat is looking nicer again and she seems to have more energy. \u00a0 I have no idea if that’s me or her other source of food is back online too. \u00a0 But it’s good to see. \u00a0 I’m too single to have a pet and this is in many ways an ironic echo of the story of my life. \u00a0 It seems no matter who I take a fondness to I always get kept at arm’s length. \u00a0 So in a way this is a relationship I’m used to. \u00a0 But she’s lived on the city streets for years now, and the other side of that coin is I probably don’t have to worry about her too much if I go away for a while. \u00a0 I might be able to talk one of my other neighbors into putting some food out for her while I’m gone.<\/p>\n

The other day I bought some nice stainless steal cat bowls, one for water and one for food. \u00a0 And some cat food. \u00a0 Today she ate from both. \u00a0 She actually seemed to like the cat food better then the human food. \u00a0 And thus Bruce, walking the stations of life, steps into that crazy old man who feeds stray cats stage. \u00a0 Oh well. \u00a0 I guess I don’t mind.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She’s an adorable little calico and she’s feral so she won’t let anyone get too close. \u00a0 But for several years now she’s been lurking around my street and occasionally visiting Casa del Garrett, to check the menu around the bird feeders, and every now and then catching something. \u00a0 I keep the feeders well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149,153,141],"class_list":["post-6519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-casa-del-garrett","tag-cats","tag-life-in-the-big-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}