Cats, Cats, Cats

I feel like I'm living in Rene Gutteridge's Skary Indiana - there are cats everywhere around my house. It started innocently enough. A cute pair of young cats showed up on our doorstep. My mother, being the kind-hearted soul that she is, asked us to put some food out for the pair. One was solid black and the other a black and white mix.

Now these are ferrel cats, wild and uncatchable. At first they ran for the woods as soon as the door was opened, but after a time they would sit in the yard and wait for food to be placed in their bowl. Then we began to notice that the black and white one was putting on weight. The solid black one didn't - uh, oh.

Yep, several weeks later a litter appeared. My sister caught them and brought them into the house after they had time to have been weaned. We managed to give them away. But we couldn't catch Little Mama to take her to the vet. Little Mama and Panther were still too wild. They had become accustomed to us enough to come to the door and beg, though, when their food bowl was empty.

Then along this journey an opossum showed up and decided she liked cat food as well. One night my mother went outside to sit for a while. The bag of cat food for Panther and Little Mama was sitting on the table next to her. It began to move. There wasn't any wind. It moved again, so my mother came back into the house. It turned out that Ms. Opossum had become a mother and one of the babies decided cat food was tasty as well.

The night Little Mama delivered her second litter involved the cat food bag as well - she used it as a nursery. She had six kittens that night. We found two in the yard and four in the food bag. She didn't like where we put them because too many humans came visiting. So she moved them into the woods beside our house. That same night Panther disappeared.

My sister brought in a stray dog. That dog got out and chased after Panther and Little Mama. We figured the dog got hold of Panther while Little Mama ran and hid. After Little Mama moved her litter we didn't see them for several weeks. We thought maybe something had gotten them as well. Wrong.

As they got to weaning stage, Little Mama brought them up to the house and introduced them to cat food. They're all growing and will soon be to reproducible stages of their own. Little Mama is expecting again, by the way. Now a yellow tabby, very large and mature comes to the feeding trough. A couple of weeks ago a big, gray tabby joined the ever-growing cat population.

Our indoor cat, Shrimp, who hated being outside and would only venture into the fresh air about four weeks during the spring at night when the weather was just right, has abandoned the house to join the cat crowd outside. We almost can't force her into the house. It's been a complete turnaround for her after sixteen years. Of course that makes my life simpler - I don't have to clean a cat box!

I don't know what animals to expect next, but I've decided that my mother, my sister and I have formed a new not-for-profit society. I've named it The Society for Feeding the Neighborhood Cats & Other Animals. Membership will only cost $20 per year. We are open for donations and would willingly accept them, if I could figure out how to become incorporated without having to fill out all the government paperwork. Although, it might be worth the hassle. I'll bet we would qualify for some dandy government grants.