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.