A Few Too Many

This time of year, cats come out of the woodwork.   Males start roaming looking for fights and sex.  They get killed on roads by the score. 

I'm still at it at the burned out house colony.   We had a tiny teensy bit of snow here yesterday.  Our school district did not close but many did, for less than an inch of snow that quickly melted and the sun came out, although temps remained cold.

By the time it was light yesterday morning, the dusting was mostly gone.

I went out in my garage, day before yesterday, and was shocked to see a black cat sleeping in the chair where I usually sit and read.   I thought it was Dude, the big black burned out house colony male, sitting in a cage in the garage, waiting for that barn home.  But he was still in the cage.

Dude, who was fixed last Monday and will be leaving soon for a Corvallis barn home.

I stared at the cat, who had backed off into my garage stuff, and was staring at me, like "you messed up my nap!"

It wasn't Arrow, the smaller of the two black cats I have still.  The third, Jade, died recently, of mouth cancer.

And how did he even get in my garage, I wondered, since I rarely leave the door open.   And how long had he been inside?   I finally just let him out, and later saw him on a porch a couple streets away.   I wanted to stop my car, roll down the window, and lecture him.

The freeloader in my garage

I set the trap out at the burned out house colony yesterday, since someone was eating in the trap.   In the meantime, I determined the old tabby girl in the bathroom is completely tame.  Now what, I thought.  She was supposed to go to a barn home with Dude and the two girl teens. 

Then I go check the trap at the colony and there's a cat in it.  I think it will be the black and white I've heard about from a neighbor.  Instead, it is a girl, an almost entirely black torti.  In fact you wouldn't know it was not a black cat unless you looked in light and saw the bits and flecks of orange.

As I sat there, in my car, temps dropping (got down to 20 F degrees last night), I watched a brown mackerel tabby male come through, checked the food area, went on, rubbing his cheek against the edges of anything, marking.  I'd passed him on the road when headed to the colony, a half mile away.  He gets around.  And he'll be dead soon, hit on the road, beat to hell by a bigger badder male, something, if not neutered.   Of the ten trapped so far at the colony, 7 have been females.  This is not unusual at all for this time of year.  The females stick around their familiar territory.  The males take off, hormone driven, lusting, fighting, marking.  Males come in by the score, if any of the colony females are in heat.  Only one of the females, one of the first trapped thankfully, was in heat, one of the younger tabby girls.

If I have a lot of spay neuter space available, I like to leave an in heat female in the colony pulling in boys from ten miles.  It can make a huge difference, get every male that shows up fixed.   Saves their lives.  Stops the fighting and marking.  Creates peace.

World Peace by surgical procedure I call it.  Too bad we can't pull that with the human species.

Well that's the story for now.   Cats everywhere, too many unfixed ones, and I'm behind as usual on everything.  Off I go.