One More Nature Note

[poliphilo]

This bright spring weather that has the birds all excited also brings the cats. I see them stalking along the back wall like they think they're untouchable.  Sometimes they come down into the yard.  I don't welcome them- and if they show any signs of lingering I bang on the window. I love my little feathered dinosaurs- and I do not take kindly to them being harrassed or attacked.

Comments

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Five cats was our maximum. We also had a rabbit at one point, because Senior Cat brought it home half-dead (and it was a tame rabbit). We nursed Leonora the rabbit back to health, only to have her keel over of myxomitosis (how do you spell that!) a few months later.

D'oh!

I currently have a bold blackbird who mooches round when I'm in the garden. Tonight, a black cat who's a regular bird-killing visitor was lurking, but he was given short shrift and escorted off the premisis.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

PS. All our five cats were allowed complete freedom to go outside and murder as they liked. I did try to curb their excesses by fitting them with bells, and keeping them in during the early morning and the evening when the birds are dozy. We also gave our neighbours carte blanche to chase the moggies out of their gardens when the furry monsters were trying to be homicidal.

Cats are predators. Full stop. You can't exactly stop them doing what comes naturally. It was particularly bad with stable cats - they were meant to catch rats and mice but tried their paw at anything that crossed their path. The keepers of the big house where my horse was billeted thought they were wonderful because they kept the rabbits and moles in check. (I encouraged this generous feeling on their part by ensuring that whenever I found a murdered ornamental white dove, I chucked it deep into the nearest hedge. They were none the wiser and blamed the local peregrine falcon for their ever diminishing dove population).

I still like cats. But I wouldn't keep one at my present address. I don't think it's very fair to keep cats confined indoors; if I let one out here, it would probably be squished by an ignorant tosser in a motor car within days.

Oh, and my husband's allergic, so I can't even fraternise with them now:-(

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Our cats killed all sorts. I once found a bird- still alive- that had been stripped of all its feathers- and another time I had to put a badly mangled sparrow out of its misery. That was very unpleasant.

One of them used to line up her catches- mice mainly- in the neighbour's yard. Poor woman, she (a) hated cats and (b) was terribly squeamish and went into a panic when faced with dead things.

Mind you, we had one cat who never caught anything more challenging than bugs and worms.

A couple of our cats died on the road. Another broke its neck falling off a roof.

I'm allergic to pet fur too- and take tablets for it. It's amazing how much fluff the average rabbit produces.