rejectomorph (flying_blind) wrote,
rejectomorph
flying_blind

Wild

Lately I've seen a pair of cats in the area behind my back fence several times. I'm pretty sure they're a mom and her kitten. The property directly behind ours is a third acre or so with a double-wide mobile and a couple of outbuildings, and it's been vacant for about a year. North of that is a place with more than an acre of ground including a good-sized field and some woods. It too has a couple of outbuildings, including a garden shed that is partly open. Beyond that property on two sides lie mostly undeveloped fields and woods, teeming with small creatures cats might find tasty. I've assumed that the mom cat and her kitten (about half grown, judging from its size) are feral.

There's certainly plenty for them to eat in the area, and the garden shed provides good shelter. This evening I noticed the kitten playing near the garden shed, and then saw what I thought was the mom cat nearby—a gray striped kitty—but then realized that it was too small to be her. After watching for a moment I realized that there were two kittens. I have no idea where mom has been hiding the other one. Anyway, if these are indeed feral kitties, they present a problem for me. Sooner or later my cat is going to go back there and find them and either try to beat the snot out of one or both kittens, or else get into a fight with their mom. And even though my cat can undoubtedly beat the kittens now, they are going to get bigger and will sooner or later start coming over here and taking revenge on her.

Unless both kittens either get adopted or decide to move on to other places when they get older, there's sure to be trouble eventually. Thus I've been wondering if I ought to rat them out to animal control. The lot with the double-wide is open to the world, but the larger place to the north is fully fenced, and both properties have lots of hiding places, and of course there are woods beyond them, so I don't know that animal control could even snag these fast and wary creatures. I've never seen any of the three approach any of the houses in view, and none of them has come anywhere near me, though they've watched me from the distance. Ideally, I'd just adopt them and they and my cat would all learn to get along, but I know the ideal is incredibly unlikely to ever be.


Aside from that, nothing is happening here except that more fluffy clouds appeared today, and when darkness fell I began seeing occasional flashes of lightning. But I've heard no thunder, and there is no hint of rain, either. There have been occasional gusty breezes, though. These are the circumstances under which a wildfire is most likely to get started. That might solve my problem with the feral cats, but it would be a drastic, regional solution for such a minor local problem. In any case I should probably shut the machine down in case of either power outage or nearby lightning strike. Eh, summer. I'll be glad (as usual) when fall gets here.
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