Almost Upset The Apple Cart

You may or may not know that I live in a house with 5 cats. Yes five. And that puts my squarely in 'Crazy Cat Lady' land, which scores very high on my "So What?" meter.

I also live in farm country. Farm country is the place where assholes come to drop off unwanted animals. Just dump them like they were garbage.

A completely inconceivable notion to me. I can't IMAGINE throwing away an animal because I don't want it anymore. But there are lots of people who do. Lots and lots. And there's a special place in Hell for them, but that's for another blog. The farms have a fairly large cat population too. Working barn cats, you know.

There was this little orange & white cat that I've been feeding for awhile. Mrs. Cat. Her picture was posted here a couple weeks ago. Mrs. Cat came here pregnant, and at the beginning of the summer brought me four kittens. And they're just all cute as hell. We've been feeding the whole family for some time now. My plan is to get them used to me, then gather them all up, and get them fixed. Last week, they started disappearing. By Sunday, there were none. Which I thought was really odd, but I know that Kitten Attrition is an ugly reality out here, with predators and the road. It's just one of those things. Or they walk out into the corn and find bigger and better places to be. It's just life. I hadn't see the whole family together all week.

Yesterday when I got home from work, there was one kitten sitting on the porch with Mrs. Cat. He's my favorite of the lot, the runt of the litter, all fuzzy and yellow and just sweet as all get out. I call him Grunt. He ran up to me mewing in his little kitty voice, and Mrs. Cat strolled off into the corn.

"weird" I thought. Because she just walked away. Like she was tired of dealing with the Grunt, and she was giving him to me. And that little voice just broke my heart. Awww....

So I brought him inside. Much to the great annoyance of the household.

Holy Hell! The angst! The gnashing of teeth! The stalking around looking put out! The hissing!
Goodness! Grunt spent the night following Pete or Maxx around trying to get someone to love him. To no avail, might I add. He settled in on the couch with Obbie and I like he's lived in the house all his life.

When it was time for bed, he curled up on the couch and went to sleep, and we went upstairs. Preceded by the now furious household, grumbling and clicking their teeth. Sorry kids. You all were outside once, and this is just another foundling. Get over yourselves. They actually sat on the bed, the bureau, the bedside table and the windowsills all night. They were not going to be near that kitten, no matter what!

At four am this morning, I woke to that little kitty voice crying and crying somewhere in the house. So I got up. Because I was going to get up in an hour anyway, so why not? I came down with the grumpy bunch, (who were scared to death they weren't EVER GOING TO EAT AGAIN) and fed them. Found Grunt, separated him from the rest of the group, and opened the back door to put him outside to eat. Lo and behold, the entire Mrs. Cat family was sitting on the stoop waiting for their crunchies. Hum. So I put Grunt down with the pack, and everyone fussed all over him, and then proceeded to chow down. He was right there in the middle of it all too.

Right now, I think I'm just going to leave him outside. They are all getting along just fine, and if he's supposed to come back and be number Six, then it'll happen. I'm not going to push it. If for nothing else, just to get the rest of my house from being complete maniacs. I figure that I'll capture all the outside cats at one time, and haul them to the spay and neuter clinic, and my work here will be done. Obbie's informed me that five new cats is a total dealbreaker. Which I knew. But one! Just one!! We'll see what becomes of Grunt. He's a sweetie. Anyone want a kitten? I'll have to visit you first!

Crazy cat lady indeed.