Wordy Wednesday: Our new visitors!

Miss Marble writes:

There are two new visitors to our deck, our house, and our yard!  Tigress and I don't like them very much, because they eat our food and one of them gets pets from our family.  Our purrents say that one of them will learn to take turns with us and the other one will find a new home within the next couple months.  I certainly hope that turns out to be true!  I had to go out the door to the other dimension (aka the front door) this morning, because my door was blocked by the intruder who gets pets.  Mommy had to pick me up and put me out in the other dimension, then give me pets to let me know that it was still the same place.  No, it's not!  It's the other dimension!

 Panther writes:

Aack!  The lady took pictures of me!  I really don't like the flashy box, but learned last night that the red light means the white light will flash.  I freeze when the red light comes on, wait until after the white light flashes, then go on about my business (mainly getting pets from the lady and twirling around her while she talks to me).  I've been hanging around this new house since July 4th.  The people think that I either was dumped or ran away because of the fireworks.  I obviously know all the important things that a housecat should know, like what doors, collars, lights, people, and toys are, so I was an owned cat very recently.  I have a collar, but that is from these new people.  The tag is made especially for me, and says "Am I yours???" on one side and "If so, call xxx-xxx-xxxx" on the other.  The people named me Panther because I'm all black with gold eyes.  I'm shorthaired, and between 8 months and a year old.  I am not fixed, so if I truly am a stray or a dumped cat, that will be the first order of business (along with testing to make sure I'm free of any diseases).

I'm a very friendly boy, but I love to play, so I was showing off my ferociousness on the tomato cage!  I headbutt any hand that pets me, talk like a Siamese, and love to brush up against the people.  I'm a very strong boy, so my headbutts really push the people's hands!

If you are in the Hazel Dell/Walnut Grove area of Clark County, Washington, and know where I belong, please let the people know by commenting on this blog post.  If you are local, please share this information via blog, Facebook, etc., to help me find my home.  Thank you!

Our second new visitor is the raccoon in back.  He or she is a new kit, born about 12 weeks ago (probably), and just started coming with his mom.  His mom is one of last summer's kits, born to R.K., so the new kit is the fourth generation since we've lived in this house (three years).  He's very smart, and even likes to play with the toys JJ left behind!  The plastic saw is one of his favorites.  He'll spend a few minutes turning it over and over in his hands, trying to figure out what it is and what it does, then he'll bite it and put it down.  Daddy gave the outside cats a hotdog that had fallen on the floor inside, but the cats didn't want it.  The kit found it and figured out it was food after rolling it around for a bit!  He also likes the blue scoops from the weather station.

R.K. brought a birthday present to show Mommy yesterday!

R.K. writes:

It was about this time last year when my mama raccoon brought us by to see the human home and food source for the first time.  In fact, the feline kits came by one year ago yesterday for the first time!  Well, I thought I'd continue the tradition.  Yep, that's right:  this half-blind raccoon who thinks she's a kitty had kits!  I've got two healthy furballs, and they're a month or two old.  I'm not telling exactly how old they are, though.  They're about 1/4 to 1/3 my size, and I'm still nursing them, although one of them tried the cat food tonight.  I was so proud!  They played on the deck while I ate, except when the sensor light scared them.  There's space under the deck, so they ran down there when the light was too much for them.  They had a lot of fun playing on the deck, though!  They both investigated (and exclaimed about) the ladder that's lying on there, and had fun jumping in and out of the squares.  One played with the rope that's attached to the ladder, tossing the end up and catching it.  The other found a dead mouse that Tigress had presented to the humans.  My silly kit picked the mouse up and couldn't decide what it was!  It held the mouse between its front paws while standing up, turned the mouse over and over between its paws, then walked off with it to the edge of the deck.  Five minutes later, it was still carrying the dead mouse around, trying to decide if it was food or a toy!

Happy birthday to Tabby!

Tabby writes:

Today's my 7th birthday!  Wow!  Mommy says that I need to behave as a 7-year-old now.  I think she said that because I was screaming at her, though.  She was working on the computer and I wanted pets.  After asking her a few times, I screamed at her.  I'm usually pretty good about asking and waiting, but it's my birthday so I think I deserve a few pets and hugs this early!  I got them, but I had to behave properly for a little while first.  That was fine with me, because I knew I'd get my pets and birthday hugs then.

I've been teaching our raccoon kitty (R.K., the one who acts like she's a kitty) how to behave lately.  I've taught her to lie down on the other side of the glass from me.  I've also taught her how to touch noses, even though the glass is in the way so we can't really touch.  Grandma came by a few days ago and saw us doing both those things.  She loved it!  She hadn't really believed our purrents when they said that R.K. behaves like a kitty, but now she believes it!

Sumptuous Sunday!

Miss Marble writes:

Does anyone want to come over for a mousie feast?  Daddy just finished mowing the lawn with the new riding lawn mower, and there are all kinds of fat, juicy field mice running around!  I just caught two really good ones.  *licks lips*  I was inside while Daddy was mowing, because Mommy wouldn't let me go outside then.  I tried to tell her I wanted out, but it didn't work.  I'm actually glad I wasn't out with the lawn mower, but I saw the mice jumping out of the way and wanted to chase them.

The raccoon with the bad eye (it's mostly blind in one eye) was also out in the yard hunting, but I think she was mostly interested in the salamanders.  It was good hunting for both of us!  The raccoon is one of the litter that's the same age as me, and this one is named R.K. (Raccoon Kitty) because she has learned how to behave like my sister and me!  She curls up on the deck like us and reaches up to the door handle like us.

I sleep on the bed now when I'm inside.  I love curling up on the cozy blanket, especially if Mama Freya is up there to snuggle with me.  I also like attacking Mommy's feet under the blanket, but I have to remember to use soft paws (claws in), otherwise she tells me I'm hurting her and snaps her fingers.  If she does that, I run away and come back once she is quiet again.

Tigress writes:

Yummy mice!  It was scary watching the daddy on the loud monster, but fun watching the mice scurry away from it.  I'm hunting, too, but staying back from the mown parts of the yard for a while.  I don't want to have that monster come and get me, too, even though no one's riding it now.  It's just sitting quietly by itself, so I think it's alright.  That's what the one next door does, and it's safe when no one's on it.

I've invented a new game!  I play it with the mommy!  She sticks her hand out the sliding window-door, and that's my cue to slink along the wall.  I get almost to her hand, then crouch down and reach my right paw up to tag her fingers.  I sniff them, then touch them again!  I'm very brave!  I even let her touch my ear when I'm eating sometimes, and other times just let her have her hand out toward me while I'm eating close by the door.  My sister wants to know why I don't just come inside again and let the mommy and the daddy pet me, but I'm not that brave yet.  I've seen how much everyone else enjoys that, but I'm not ready for that yet.  I do enjoy my game with the hand, though!

Wordy Wednesday: Catching up on the news, pt. 2

Mama Leopard writes:

My boys and I have been hanging out at the house for the past week, right up close most of the time.  When we need shelter, we've been hiding in the roses around the cedar tree, just off to the right of the picture above.  It makes a great hideout, and we're camouflaged from the raccoons (even though they haven't done anything bad to us).  The lady and man say that next week there will be wire boxes over our food.  I'm not sure about that, but as long as we can still get to the food I don't have a problem with it.  At least, not until I see the boxes.

The lady (and sometimes the man) comes out at about 9 pm to put water in the bowl and put food out for us.  We show up, and if the humans are running late my kittens tap on the glass while I wait expectantly about a foot from the window.  When the humans come out, I back up but am still pretty close.  I'm learning to trust them, so I let them be within 3 feet of me now!  My babies run, but pop right back up and investigate.  My striped boy was mewing to the man, and the man meowed back to him!  My little one didn't know the humans could speak our language, so he looked from the man to me, and back again to him, then mewed again and got an answer again!

Mrs. Raccoon writes:

I had three kits around the time that Mama Leopard had her kits.  Now that they are old enough to travel well and eat regular food, I have shown them where the cat food is.  Since my kits are so young, I usually accompany them.  The picture above shows me in the middle and two of my kits.  However, two nights ago I let them go on their own to the food place.  I should have known better!  They are too young to handle the ones on the other side of the window!  The one on the other side of the window who looks like us, Little Bit, likes to jump at me when I eat.  Since I wasn't there, she jumped at my kits, and they jumped back, thinking she was going to come out and play with them!  They don't know what cats are, and thought she was another baby raccoon.  All three jumped at her at the same time, hitting the window with a bang.  That scared Little Bit, and she meowed at them.  They got confused, stood up, and put their front paws on the window, looking in at her.  She jumped again and they jumped again.  The human came and removed Little Bit.  Then the human came back to the window, knelt down, and looked my three babies straight in the eyes.  In a commanding voice, she told them that they could not jump at the window like that, Little Bit was not going to come out to play, and they had better be nice.  They looked at her, got down on all fours again, and backed up.  Still looking over their shoulders, they ran back to where I was and told me all about it!

Feral Friday: More New Visitors

Spooky:  That's not a kitty!  What is it?
Little Bit:  It's called an opossum.
Spooky:  Is it friendly?
Little Bit:  I'm not sure.  I think so, or it wouldn't let us be this close without growling!  The ones at the old house were friendly.

We've had some new visitors come by!  Not only this possum, and of course Tuxedo Kitty and the small black kitty, but a tabby-striped cat.  The raccoon also brought its mate by last night!  It's all been very exciting to watch!

Window Views: the Nighttime Version!

For our Window Views on Thursday post this week, we feature our nighttime visitor: a raccoon! He or she started coming by on Saturday evening, and the next night we got a video of him. We had put out food on the deck for a feral tuxedo cat that Daddy had seen running around in the yard, and the raccoon noticed the food so he stopped by to eat. The cat came two nights ago, but is feral so ran when it noticed all the activity inside. The raccoon, on the other paw, has no problem with us watching! Last night, Little Bit jumped at the glass trying to get the raccoon to play, and scared it by doing that, but then the raccoon walked right up to the glass and lowered its head, crouching down in a similar way to a play bow! So we think it's probably lonely and wants some friends, so it comes by to eat and enjoy our company. We sure enjoy it! Here's our video below! :) Featuring: Rori, Little Bit, Tabby, and the raccoon.

Our entry for the Bird & Squirrel Watching competition

Thanks to the Furry Bambinos for hosting this competition! At our old house, we had lots of things to watch: birds, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, dogs, and the other cats. So here's some pictures of us looking at them, and some of them looking at us.

Carbon (l) and Rori (r) squirrel-watching

Here's who we were watching! Yep, he's eating the ferals' kitty food.

Rori watching and growling at the dogs in the neighbor's front yard.

Little Bit (l) and Starla (r) looking at each other. View from out the same window as the top picture.

Our raccoon friend, who later brought her three babies to eat and play on the porch.

Baby Possum, whose mommy brought him when he was kitten-sized. He came back as an adult (as pictured) to eat almost every night.

The raccoons and possums were very polite and always let the feral cats eat first. They would watch us, and watch our humans, but we always told them that it was just fine for them to eat the food. We'd rather they ate that than stinky old garbage! We loved the outside friends, and miss them, but now we've got a whole new backyard to watch!

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Shadow, Spongebob, big-head Tom kitty, Precious, Siamese cat from over the fence, Marble, raccoons.

Newsflash: Mama raccoon had three kits around the time Little Bit had her kittens, and she brought them last week! Mama raccoon was very watchful as her kits played around the porch, but it was broad daylight and they were all enjoying the sun. :) The baby raccoons are now about 13 or 14 weeks old, and probably about the size of a large cat.

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Shadow, Spongebob, Marble, Chubby, Siamese cat, raccoon, Precious

Marble actually lounged on the porch yesterday, enjoying the warm weather and sunlight!

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Shadow, Spongebob, possum, raccoon, (and we think Tux has been by, from how Carbon was acting).

Carbon told us someone interesting was out there, so we think Tux has been coming regularly as well. Shadow saw that we had all the kittens one time when the door was open, because two of them tried to run at her! She just kind of sniffed, and then the lady picked the kittens up and shut the door, opening it a few minutes later to put food out.

It's been really hot out, so there's a bowl of water as well.

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Possum, raccoon, Shadow, Spongebob, Chubby, Precious.

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Little Bit (before she came inside permanently), Boo-Boo Kitty (before she got dumped), Shadow, Spongebob, Chubby (the orange kitty), raccoon, Precious, Tom, Marble.

Tom actually belongs to a man on the street behind the green house. The lady found that out when she was talking with the neighbor about the kittens, because one of Boo-Boo's grey kittens went to him.

Of course, the big news is Little Bit, Boo-Boo, and all the kittens. See previous posts if you missed that!

It's getting to be only Shadow, Tux and the grey kitten that are true ferals; all the rest are friendly neighborhood cats or strays. We're still going to post them all for "Feral Friday", though.

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Orange kitty, Little Bit, Boo-Boo Kitty, Spongebob, Shadow, Tux, grey striped kitten, raccoon, Precious.



Tux is back! Tux is back! Our Tuxie is finally back! We hadn't seen him or his brother since June of last year (when the above picture was taken), so we thought maybe they'd moved on or something had happened to them. But Tux is back! We saw him at the food bowl a couple nights ago: fast-moving black body with white feet. We couldn't get a positive i.d. then, because he moved too fast. The man saw him this morning, though, and it definitely was a bobbed tail on the cat that ran from the backyard to the house across the street.

The orange kitty from down the street is now homeless. His people moved and didn't take him. He let the lady pet him, and was meowing at her, happy. He's SO skinny; he was starving! We'll watch him and make sure he gets enough to eat when he comes by.

It was thunderstorming yesterday: a BIG storm warning and tornado watch (the watch went away, though)! It's been SO hot lately!

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Shadow, Spongebob, Little Bit, black fluffy Carbon-lookalike, Black Tom Kitty, Orange-head Kitty, Orange kitty from down the street, Raccoon, Boo-Boo Kitty

Other than Little Bit's pregnancy, no kitty news this week. The dogs next door escaped, and the people spent over an hour searching for them, even driving up and down the streets calling for them. Somehow, the dogs were found.

Photo Friday: Wildlife

These guys, along with a flock of starlings, share the cat food on the back porch with the feral cats and provide hours of entertainment for our inside kitties.

Photo Friday posts

Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Little Bit, Boo-Boo Kitty, Outdoor Fluffy Buddy, Shadow, Spongebob, Orange-head Kitty, Tom Kitty, baby possum, raccoon.

Our big surprise this week was the return of baby possum. You can read our post from Tuesday about that. The lady also observed Tom Kitty licking Orange-head Kitty's ear while OHK was screaming about it (both unfixed males)!

The lady sold 20 pins this week: 10 of Baby Chiba and 10 of Shadow.

"Feed a Feral, Save a Life" feral kitten button by TraceElements
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Feral Friday by the Trailer Kitties

Food bowl rollcall:

Shadow, Starla (now inside only), Little Bit, Orange-head kitty, Big-head black tom kitty, Outdoor Fluffy Buddy, Boo-Boo Kitty, Precious (grey & brown calico from across the street who may have been abandoned), the raccoon, black tom cat who's Carbon's look-alike, SpongeBob.

Shadow's back! She's very hungry, so she may have been hiding from the construction guys. Raccoon came three consecutive days. Precious, who we hadn't seen in a few weeks, came back, and she may be pregnant.

News from the Food Bowl

Feral Friday food bowl rollcall at the green house:

Outdoor Fluffy Buddy, Big-headed black tom kitty, orange-headed kitty, Boo-Boo, Little Bit, the raccoon, Starla, SpongeBob, Shadow, and the orange cat from down the street. Everyone came this week again, even the raccoon.

No females are in heat anymore, so the yowling has gone away for the moment. Starla and Smokey will be spayed on March 4th, and we have a vet for the big-headed black tom kitty to be neutered as well (but not a date set yet). All their "fixes" will be done through the Tom & Mom Special. Many, many thanks to organizations like these who provide low-cost spaying and neutering!

Easy Like Sunday Morning...in the dark

The man looked out the window, and saw us (Little Bit and Starla) sitting on the porch railing looking in at him! We love sitting here and chilling, saying hi to any of the inside kitties who happen to look out the window at us (and the humans if they do). The man told the lady to come with the camera, and she got this picture of us.






She also looked out the back door and saw our raccoon friend again. He wondered if she was going to run him off, so he watched her the whole time. He even stood up on his hind legs, watching her as he pulled the food from the bowl like someone eating chips and watching the game. Yes, Super Bowl reference, but after all it is today!