Neighborhood Cats

 As a general rule on here I try not to complain much, but for a lack of anything interesting to post today and the desire to post something current instead of memories, here goes:

The past year or so we seem to have had a plethora of stray cats roaming around and it is annoying.  We have a cat; Smudge, of whom you have seen many photos if you have followed this blog for very long.  My sister-in-law up the road from us has a cat; Princess.  They both tend to keep to their own territory and, as of late, have preferred to stay in the house to avoid the feline drama outside.

However up the road, maybe 1/4 of a mile, our neighbor has a literal herd of cats, none of which he fixes, and all of which he leaves outside in his sheds.  They are for the most part orange, so when we see an orange one down here we know to whom it belongs.  He has had this herd of cats for several years, and their numbers have fluctuated from the starting number of 3-4 up to 15 or so, give or take a kitten or two.  We have had them stray down here more than once, we have seen more than one dead alongside the road on occasion.  And we see random tom cats crossing our place with one goal in mind.  Lately there have been a great deal more toms roaming around, one of which we call Lion Head, due to the mane of fur around his neck.  The neighbor has taken to using a BB gun to chase off the cats that he says aren't his.  In my opinion, which I recognize bears little influence, if he's going to have unspayed females roaming around he's going to toll in tomcats from 5 miles around, and therefore they DO in fact belong to him and he ought to DO something about it; like get shed of all of the kittens and fix his female cats. 

He puts out a pile of dry food for them only once per day.  Of course since the food is out in the shed, well away from the house, the coons and lord knows what all else wild animals get into it.  So these cats are forever up here scavenging in my compost area, or are wandering around our barns and sheds.  The females wander quite far to feed their kittens. Gary's hay shed, which is in the field behind this neighbor's house, stinks like cat.  The only good thing is that there probably isn't a rodent within a 200 foot radius of the neighbor's house.  lol

Another neighbor to the east of us was an animal collector.  She recently passed away and her husband told me when I met him at church a couple of weeks ago that she'd left behind about 11 cats.  She was very reclusive, they are a long story all on their own,  and I am quite sure she had more than that out in their sheds and barns.  Ha.  I would not be surprised if that wasn't where Lion Head and the other toms originated.  

Time, disease and, unfortunately, coyotes tend to thin out the strays around here.  In fact this past summer the neighbor said at one point his cat population took a dive down to just 7 or 6 and he had no idea why.  But at about the same time one of them had come up here and died in a back clearing...fortunately away from the house.  Gary found him by random accident just curled up dead in the grass.  He was super thin and out of condition.  I am sure none of the strays, or of the neighbor's cats, are vaccinated or vetted at all. 

I wish people would take care of their pets.