What Happens When We Befriend a Stray Cat

The title is one that my husband came up.

And I started giggling all over again when he stressed the "befriend" part. 

Cuz this story....I think this could only happen to us.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a yellow tom cat hanging around our house.  It was normally found over by the chicken coop, sometimes in the shed, but I noticed it was getting more and more brave and getting closer to the house.

When I fed the chickens some scraps one morning from the kitchen door, the cat was there amongst them all waiting for the scraps too.  I think he thought I wouldn't notice him if he were surrounded by my beloved chickens.

I told my husband that I'd seen the cat a lot more and if he didnt' want it to end up in the house, he'd better drop it off somewhere.  "You know me..." I told him, which means he needed to interpret that my heart would melt for the poor thing some wet cold day and let it in.  And if I didn't, I knew four boys that would go so far as to trap the thing and haul it in the house to love on.

On a sunny day, my husband opened the kitchen door and there was the cat.  He picked it up.  It instantly curled up next to my burly husband's chest and began to purr.

We fed it some cat food, pet it a bunch more, and sent it on it's way out the door.

Since then the cat has been really hanging around by the house.

You can't really blame it.

On a dark night as I was standing at the sink peeling potatoes, the boys tumbled in the door from a game of football in the side yard and began to call the cat.  The three little guys would call the cat in a few steps more and then glance at me to see if I was hearing them.  I just kept on peeling potatoes...keep in mind if I stuck my leg out I could have touched each of them.  Our kitchen is tiny...there was no way to keep a secret in there.

But the boys thought they were pulling a fast one on me.

Suddenly S4 exclaimed, "Quick, shut the door!"

The door was slammed and the big tom cat was scooped up in someone's arms and the boys ran for the living room.

I finished peeling the potatoes and went in to check on them.  Three boys and one cat were curled up in the lazy-boy chair, the cat was purring and being loved on like it hadn't in probably forever.

"See our new cat, Moma?  Can we keep it? Please? It's so nice! Please, Moma?"

I told them they would have to ask their Daddy.

Their faces fell.

Then I told them we might as well show it the house an feed it so they took it to the kitty litter box, where the cat, being the gentleman he was, peed.  Then it ate all the dog food in the dish.

When the dog food was gone, they moved the cat to the laundry room to see where all the cat food was at.  Fernie Cow, our princess cat, was not impressed with a visitor.  Especially when he ate all the cat food in the heaped full dish.

At dinner, S4 fed the cat I don't know how much chicken.

Then the cat curled up behind the washing machine and dryer and fell asleep in the nice warm spot.

Later, my husband walked in.  He'd been out for the day and I had called it an early night and was all curled up in bed already when he entered the bedroom.  "What is THIS?" he asked, holding the cat.

"Um, a really nice kitty cat?" I offered.

S1 walked had walked in with his daddy and he laid across the bed retelling the story how his little brothers had coerced the cat in.  Meanwhile, the cat had curled up next to me and was purring sleepily.

"I have never seen such a fat cat!" My husband said, rubbing the cat's enlarged belly.

"Don't do that!" I gasped, "Do you know how much this cat has eaten today?"  I began recounting all the food he had eaten as my husband rubbed the cat's tummy roughly again.  I slapped my husband's away while the cat suddenly stood up.

"See, he doesn't like that," I said as the cat began to squat down again on the bed.

"Well, he does seem like a nice cat," my husband began to cave as I cocked my head in concern as the cat seemed to be taking an odd stance.  And it was a new cat.

I pushed it off the bed.

It began to squat again.  And suddenly it hit me.

"No!" I squawked and flew the blankets back.  Never mind that S1 was laying across the bed and I was just in my panties and t-shirt.

I picked the cat up as fast as I could and held him as far away from my body as I could as I ran for the bathroom.

There was poop literally hanging from the cat's behind.

A little dropped on the floor as I dropped the cat in the kitty litter box.  My husband and son, who were wondering what on earth had suddenly possessed me to go screaming from the bedroom with the cat, figured out quickly what was going on.  In one quick swoop my husband scooped up that cat and tossed it outside.

I began to giggle as I cleaned up the poop.

My husband looked at me like I all my exhaustion had finally caught up with me and made me truly insane.

"Come on!" I giggled, "You have to admit it's pretty funny.  Here we are going on and on how great the cat is and how it uses the litter box and it tries to take a dump on our bed."

He grinned a little.

"Yah, only we would befriend a cat that would try to crap on our bed," he snickered.

It's been two days.  The cat has been skittish at best when I have managed to catch glimpse of it.

But I'm sure it won't be long before we let it in again.

Maybe.

Sadie Gave Me Poison Ivy....

...or else I think she did.

Here is how it happened.

Jr, who was over tired and didn't appreciate in any way the thought of me putting him down even for a moment, and S4, who had worked hard to make a plow (stick) on his tricycle (he secretly thinks that that his Daddy will find his plow genius and let him help plow tonight) and wanted to show it off, headed out with the dogs and a basket of laundry to hang on the line.

S4 was busy showing off his plow and Jr was busy just experiencing outdoor freedom, when both dogs began to bark. They barked ferociously, and then took off. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary, I figured it must have been a rabbit or something like that. I waited a bit and then called the dogs back. Sadie kept barking fiercely but Josie waddled on back. I finished hanging up the load of clothes and calling Sadie in answer to her barks. ("bark bark" pause "Sadie" pause "bark bark" etc)

I looked at a now happy Jr, a seriously sad his dog was missing S4, a more than fluffy dog who was sitting with her head cocked to me questioningly and sighed deeply. "Okay, let's go."

I lifted Jr to my shoulders where he immediately dug his chubby fingers thru my pony tail causing it to fall into my face and finally settled on hanging onto my ears as I took S4's hand and we followed Josie out to the great nasty, green, slimy swamp.

This swamp is the dividing line on our property. It would take little imagination to see alligators and long black snakes in it. It's just that nasty looking.

On the opposite side of the swamp, the part on our neighbors, was our black German shepherd Sadie barking ferociously at the terrible awful scary creature...our cat. Technically, it's not ours, but Georgia showed up last winter and liked the boys and table scraps they gave her so much she just stuck around. However, after this incident, she may take up residence some where else. I had to sorta chuckle when I thought about her getting all the way across that swamp and up safely in that tree. She musta seemed she had walked on water!

S4 was screaming in his most authoritative voice "Get-over-here-Sadie-and-I'll-give-you-a-bone." When she never even glance his way, he muttered "stinkin' darn dog". (His father taught him how to speak.)

Seeing we were getting no where, I decided to head toward the house again. As I went to turn back, I looked down at my flip flop clad (with pretty NYPD Beet nail polish on my toes) and seen I was standing in the middle of poison ivy.

I groaned aloud.

I had been so worried about Sadie I hadn't paid attention to the undergrowth we were walking on, or what we had to walk through to get out. Poison Ivy everywhere I looked.

For all my life I had never had poison ivy, until S4 was born and then I got a case of it that lasted all summer long. It was miserable. And I have gotten it every year since. Apparently, here on the farm, we grow great poison ivy.

So we headed back, more than fluffy Josie, jabbering away at the disobedience of Sadie S4 whose hand I was holding and clinging to my ears as he sat on my shoulder and my free hand held him there Jr. Really, we must have been a sight.

Just as we got up to the house, Sadie appeared. Soaked. Covered in green slime. A happy look on her face.

As soon as we got in the house, I shucked my jeans off (and desperately prayed no on would stop and need asparagus) and jumped in the tub with S4 to scrub our feet and hands down with Tecnu. I buy Tecnu in the largest quantities I can. I scrubbed and then I scrubbed just to be sure again and doused my flip flops and his crocs too and let them soak for a bit.

So far, no poison ivy. Or Georgia the cat. I'll keep you updated.

Georgia the Cat

Here on our farm we have one dog and one cat. Here is the dog.....
Josie Posie is not all that bright but she is loyal and so we keep her around. Notice the purple crayon. For whatever reason, that is her favorite snack. That and the tootsie roll pops she keeps pulling out of the boys Halloween buckets.

This is Fernie Cow, the cat. She is the Queen Princess. This means she rules above all and she must be spoiled rotten like a princess. Folks, I followed her all over the house to get her photo. She ended up finally stopping in our BASEMENT. A creepy, don't go to at all cellar. THAT is what she did to me...crazy cat. She had to twist and turn on the floor and suddenly take an interest in darkness specks and then she finally, hearing the desperation of my voice, looked at me. No, the floors in our house are not gravel. No, our steps are not that bad. It's our CELLAR !!!
Anyhow.

Fernie Cow, keeping the princess theme, must never step outside. Imagine the barbarity of it! (keep in mind, she was born in a barn. Next to a manure pit.)

So when the boys came running down the steps (when they were supposed to be cleaning) and told me that Fernie was outside, well, I was pretty sure that they were just trying to get out of cleaning. And when Fernie was found sleeping, I was sure.

Except they kept informing me that Fernie was indeed outside.

And then one day, here comes this big male cat and he does look shockingly like Fernie Cow.

Eerily so.

S2, who knows all animals are pets whether the animal knows it or not, was determined this cat needed to have a home...in our home. Our neighbor, IM, was more than willing to help. It was “operation save cat”.

They would sneak cat food out...and Fernie Cow being the Queen Princess she is, needs hairball food. I mix a little with the other food she has to help with the feline problem and THAT was the food the boys grabbed! Thankfully, it was just a handful.

They called the cat. The chased the cat. They 'cornered' the cat in a pile of brush. I came around the corner to find them holding the kitchen door open with a trail of food headed into the kitchen and the two boys cooing “here kitty kitty....” I think the idea there was that the cat looked so much like Fernie Cow that we wouldn't notice it.

Between the boys harassing the cat and the fact that the cat found out that the chicken scraps don't always make it out of the chickens at night and instead spend the whole night unguarded in a bucket by the kitchen door, the cat has decided it loves our house. Go figure.

We eat dinner and the cat looks in the window and meows. We go outside and the cat meows. The cat meows to say hello. The cat meows to say goodnight.

The cat has the worst sounding, most hideously loud and annoying meow.

The other night we are sitting at dinner and S2 is going on and on and on about the cat. The cat's name is now Georgia. “Georgia?” I ask, nearly spitting my water out.

“Yes.” He says “He told me that would be a great name because it's kind of a boy name, George, and kind of a girl name, Georgia.”

How do you argue with that?

The problem is, the word is out. I am cleaning yesterday and a beautiful calico cat shows up right to my kitchen door. I call JM, my neighbor/renter and IM's mom, “do you have a calico cat?”

“Is it big and fat?”

“nope. Kinda skinny but pretty looking. I'd say teenager cat.”

“No, not mine." Pause. "Oh no,” she groans, “the word is out.”

“We had better get a big bag of cat food at the feed store,” I agree.

Because, really, who can resist two boys who name a cat Georgia and are sure they are your long lost best friend?

The Not So Lucky Cat Lucky

It's never a good sign when your oldest says "Moma, do we have a ladder? Cuz I really need one..."


We have the cutest little kitten, Lucky. S2 found him on the road one day on our way home from summer school. He could not leave it there so we brought it home...S2 cannot help but love on animals. Not bringing this kitten home was not an option.

My husband did not agree. I didn't want another kitten either, we have one I love and one I dislike and adding another wasn't exactly on my list of things to do. S2 promised to find a home for this kitten.

But we all fell in love with the little kitten that purrs as soon as you look at him. However, last night he had to go outside. I think my husband thinks we will try harder to find a home for him if we have to hear him cry.

But for some reason or another, Lucky climbed the big walnut tree in our yard.

The boys were panicked. They were certain that she would certainly stay there until something killed her or some other equally awful fate. I told them to leave her alone and she would come down. This is what the boys decided to do.

I don't know about you, but Lucky didn't seem too terrified.

I told the boys to leave her alone, eventually they did, until S1 came to the door cuddling Lucky. "She came down on her own like I said, huh?"I asked him smugly.
"Nope. I had to knock her out of the tree."

Literally, he knocked her out of the tree! Ah, but she seems fine now, doesn't she? But for her own safety, and the safety of my boys, I hope she stays out of the tree!