Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 02:58
Thanks a Bunch, BobbyCat
I had a disgusting experience when I took Pixie outside late Monday evening. When I come back from checking on the horses and after I have given the kitties their canned kitty food treat in the basement, I go outside and come up in back of the house. Charlie always made a trip around the house at night when I let him out, and I feel compelled to walk around the house from the east side yard.
I think there's some part of my psyche that figures *someone* ought to check around in back of the house, and if Charlie is not here to do it, then I should. Anyway, when I came back up from the barn Monday night, I noticed that there "something" on the rug by the back door. When I opened the door, from the light from the kitchen, I could see that it was a pile of innards. BobbyCat strikes again, I think. She often will catch a mouse and then eat it on the rug by the back door. It seemed like an awful lot of innards for a mouse, but anyway.
I made a mental note that when I took Pixie out, I should step off to the side to avoid the innards. Of course, a while later, when I went outside with Pixie, I forgot all about the innards. SQUISH with my rubber boots. Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick.
I made quite a production of sliding my feet through the grass to get the bottoms of my boots clean. We haven't had much dew because it has been so dry, and I would imagine that sliding my boots through the grass was pretty much an exercise in futility.
When I took Pixie back into the house, I made a point to walk way off to the side of that spot. I suppose now I am going to have to clean the rug. It's not really a rug, per se. It's a piece of old carpeting. I put it on the back porch by the door so Charlie would have something to lie on instead of lying on the hard, cold cement. There are so many things around here that remind me of Charlie. Even BobbyCat, our venerable hunter who makes sure there isn't a mouse within 100 feet of the house, reminds me of Charlie. She always liked to sit by Charlie when he was outside and liked to give him kitty hugs, and when she was younger, used to snuggle up with him in his kennel.
I'm glad BobbyCat takes her job of hunting varmints around the place so seriously. I just wish she wouldn't leave innards on the back step. I suppose it is her way of letting me know that she caught something. Her mother, a stray who showed up here one spring, was a great hunter, too. She brought a full-grown rabbit into the barn for her babies. And a full-grown grouse. I picked grouse feathers out of the hay for months after that, long after the momma cat and three of her babies disappeared. BobbyCat was the only one who made it back to the barn.
I wish Bobby's momma had stayed. She was a friendly cat who liked to be petted and never hissed or snarled at anyone, unlike the mother cat we have now who showed up in the barn as a kitten the same fall that BobbyCat was a kitten.
BobbyCat is a tabby, and I decided to call her BobbyCat because she has black spots on her ears that make her look like a miniature bobcat. We do actually have bobcats around here. Not very many, I don't think. But one year, in the evening, in the fall, when it was dark and I was outside with the horses giving them water and putting out hay, I heard a bob cat scream across the road from the horse pasture.
It was a sound that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The horses thought it was hair-raising sound, too. This was back when we still had my old quarter horse, Red.
The two geldings, Red and Kajun, stood in the barn door side by side all night long. I think they felt safe there. I knew they stood in the barn door because of all the piles of horse manure in that spot in the morning. That was the only time I have heard ever a bobcat scream, but once was enough.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, September 23, 2008, 03:55
Henry's New Adventure
Henry had a new adventure Monday morning. I was putting fabric softener into the washing machine for the flowered quilt that we took off the bed Sunday evening when I heard a noise. I turned around, and Henry had jumped -- yes JUMPED -- from the counter by the sink up onto the top of the cupboard above the stove.
I have a number of items displayed up there -- cookie tins and a big glass cookie jar and some unusual old canning jars and a couple of teapots, including the copper teapot that has a dent in it and chip in the Delft handle because Duke, Tiger Paw, Guinevere and Winifred knocked it off the mantel piece nearly 20 years ago when they were kittens. (I can't believe they are all gone now, by the way.)
I held my breath while Henry snooped around up there. Then I decided to move a couple of glasses and jars sitting on the counter by the sink so that when he jumped down he wouldn't knock those to the floor. I continued to watch and wait, and then a few minutes later, Henry jumped back down onto the cupboard by the sink. I don't know if he has done that before. But he made it up and down without incident this time. Henry is really quite the jumper and quite the explorer.
I'm just glad he didn't break something this time!
Turkey Vultures
When I came back from my walk Monday morning, I walked in the driveway and was startled to see turkey vultures in the neighbor's hayfield. They were perched on top of the big round bales. I thought there were only two of them. And at first, I thought they were turkeys.
But as I walked into the driveway, one of them flew up and soared high into the air. Turkeys only glide. Then as I walked farther into the driveway yet, I was surprised to see that there were about six turkey vultures all together perched on various round bales out in the field. As I watched, they flew from bale to bale, and some of them flew up to glide on the air currents.
I have never seen turkey vultures there before. Are they just passing through? Or was there carrion they were interested in nearby somewhere?
LeAnn R. Ralph
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