Autumn cats: Becoming crazy cat people? (Part one)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
As the chill of the autumn rainy season descends upon us, we have been moving from an apartment into our house for the past couple of weeks. This means leaving the dwelling that gave us Eli and Repete and the “outside” cats we feed that live under our building. Since we now have a nice yard in a fairly secluded residential area, we’ve been trying to decide on how many of the stray/outdoor cats to bring with us (in addition to our two indoor cats).
Below are photos of the four usual suspects. We have the orange & white male (The King), the white calico mother (Daisy), the young gray & white male (Hiro) and the young black calico (Delilah). If you look closely, you can see that all of their right ears have been tipped (cut slightly), which is the standard way of marking a fixed stray cat.
The King and Daisy, while not the most attractive cats and always looking kind of beaten up, are very friendly to us. They’re usually eager to spend time in our apartment and receive attention, even when we don’t have food for them. The King has a very funny-sounding broken meow.
Young Hiro and Delilah are both from Daisy’s last litter (before she was fixed). We presume The King was the father, but you never know.
Being less than a year old, Hiro is more skittish than his parents, but he’s getting friendlier. Sadly, Delilah the black calico, my favorite, was hit by a car last week (only a few days after the above photo).
So, now we’re down to three outside cats/moochers. While all three cats may be of some relation to our housecat Eli, we’re sure that at least Daisy and Hiro are relatives. We’re not positive when The King joined (read: claimed leadership of) our building’s cat colony, but it may have been after Eli’s birth in March of 2007. We will most likely take The King and Daisy with us to the new house, and I suppose Hiro too, if he decides to be tame enough to facilitate such a transfer.
We still, of course, have our two indoor cats, Lily and Eli. Read part two for some funny pictures of conehead Lily after being spayed recently – and some additional notes about Hemobart, feline blood transfusions and our late housecat Smokey.
Continue to Autumn cats: Part two »