My cats and Mother Nature

A little background: We recently moved about a half mile from where we had lived for about 16 years. When we moved, we took our pets – our Rat Terrier named Sophie, a neutered Siamese named Pepper, and our tomcat named Sputnik.  I had meant to get Sput fixed, but when you have electric bills thru the roof and medical bills, a new mortgage and 4 kids, the cat’s balls are at the bottom of the list of things to fix.  Sophie and Pepper settled into the new digs just fine.  Pepper even likes going out on the back deck to sun himself and then comes back inside when he catches the door open.

Pepper

Faelyn with Sophie

However, Sputnik had other things on his mind.  We let him out after 3 or 4 days in the house, and he took off. I just knew he’d get eaten by one of the huge dogs roaming the area or hit by a car.  A few days later, we went to the old place to clear out some more stuff, and there was Sput looking quite hungry and lonely for pettin’s.  So when we left, we took him home again.  That night he was fine, but the next night, he ended up sneaking out when someone opened the door, and he was gone again.  This has happened FIVE times.  Not kidding! Most of the time Sput has lived at the old house mooching off neighbors.

During the time we’ve lived here, a slew of stray cats have appeared on our back porch. One of them was nothing but skin and bones and was determined to stay here.  no matter what I did, he would not go away. I felt sorry for it, so I kept giving it food and put a blanket in the box on the porch. We called it Porch Cat. Now he sleeps at my feet and is getting quite fat.  I firmly believe he lived here before and somehow found his way home like Sput did.  Porchie is a neutered male (as far as I can tell anyway). So he’s laid back and mellow.   We also ended up being adopted by an adorable gray and white female cat.  She was quite young, but no longer a kitten.  She would lick your face like a dog when you picked her up, so I named her Casey (or KC for Kissy Cat).  Well… she came into heat last week.

Casey "Kissy Cat" (AKA Zoe's cat)

The toms have been taking turns hanging around outside and crying pitifully for Casey. So I’ve kept her inside as much as I can, but the kids don’t know better and let her out and she escapes.  She hardly leaves the back deck, but the toms are waiting.  Now things have gotten even more difficult. We brought Sput home for the fifth time yesterday. He suddenly doesn’t seem to want to leave.  He chases poor Casey all over the house. I’ve shown her a few places up high she can use to get away from Sput, but when she needs to get a drink or eat, he’s waiting.  The biggest problem has been the girls’ reactions.  Faelyn and Zoe are very upset that Sput keeps biting Casey’s neck and they can’t pull them apart. So far I’ve kind of let it go without really explaning anything. It’s just so violent, it’s scary to the kids.  I gotta say, I’m glad I’m not a cat.

I will be SO glad when she’s out of heat and we can get her and Sput fixed. I don’t need cat drama… or kittens!

Advertisement