Every year when it stops being so cold that it freezes at night and it hasnt yet become so hot that you can cook food by leaving it on the dashboard of your car and locking the doors…the feral barn cats have babies. Now, out here we have the large 50 lb wolf- like coyotes. We do not have the timid scraggly 30 lb dumpster diving opportunist city coyotes. We have the “taking down sheep and baby cow” coyotes. They are pretty thorough and efficient hunters. On top of these we have a lot of gray foxes. So, cats are in scarce supply out here, despite every farmer and rancher as far as i can see standing on top of this plateau, constantly purchasing or collecting cats for the purpose of keeping mice out of their feed sheds and barns. The coyotes and foxes eat the cats. So, out here, cats lives are not usually extended to 9. I leave cats alone. Ever since cricket i’d learned i cannot do the “outdoor cat” thing. I’ll get attached and then want them to survive, and then get them medical care, and then they’ll be living in the one room tiny house before you know it. Well, this year, my neighbor decided he wanted to trap and tame some of the kittens to use as barn cats on his 200 acres. I thought that would be a safe activity for me to participate in since i wasnt trapping them for me, but for my friend/neighbor. To my credit, i did not adopt any of the kittens seen pictured above. However, watching some of them get eaten, one of them nearly be eaten by a coyote my neighbor had to shoot at twice, and another lose his tail to either a raccoon or a fox put a fear in me so that when someone offered me a kitten from their momma cat in town….lets just say i was determined that cat wasnt going to be food. Yes, the tiny house is now a little more crowded.
As I’m thinking of the “lady that ate a fly” story. A couple of Great Pyrenees Dogs will keep the cats safe. 🙂
Its funny that you mention that. I really wanted a great pyrenees when i first moved here and i settled on an australian shepherd instead because someone told me the great pyrenees is often left alone with livestock and makes decisions on how to keep them safe on their own and so is very hard to train to do what you say and live by your rules since they’re used to being the authority so maybe would not make a good dog to have indoors half or more of the time. They said a great pyrenees would do what they thought was right and an australian shepherd or border collie might be more likely to do what i thought was right. I am grateful for the advice as cashew has suited my lifestyle and our needs beautifully but at one time in the past i was looking at great pyrenees puppies lol.