King of the log pile

This is our cat, N.C. When I first approached him, he was sound asleep at the end of the stack of logs, laying in the sunshine. He's likes to lay on top of the log piles we have (and we have them in a few locations around the place, so he has his pick). Chipmunk hunting, I hope.


I wish he was a little more aggressive chasing off the stray cats we keep getting. I've mentioned before how people will drop their cats and dogs off in the country. With our road being more or less a dead-end dirt road, we get a lot of drop-offs. Most recently, there are 2 gray cats hanging around. One is quite large, and I haven't seen it yet, but Kev has a few times. The other one is small, and I encountered it yesterday evening. It was around 8:30 or 9:00 pm, still light out but getting on dusk. This cat had been on our front porch, then was in our yard. I called it, and it would let me get almost to it, then it would walk ahead a little bit. This happened several times, until I was a ways from the house, off on a side trail. It finally let me touch it, and I picked it up. I got the impression it was rather tame, and I was just bringing it up against my chest when it turned into the cat version of Mr. Hyde. Scared the livin' shit outta me. I dropped the little bastard, and for a split second there, he turned toward me & I thought he was going to attack me. Holy crap. But then he took off into the woods.

He (notice how "it" became a "he") is a small, dark gray cat with very short, sleek hair. He's skinny, but solid when I picked him up. He would be an attractive cat except for a couple of things. His tail. It's huge and bushy, and it doesn't match the rest of him at all. It makes him look strange. Not in a good way. The other unattractive quality is, of course, the expression in his eyes when he's hissing at you. Mean and ugly.

So now we have the shotgun at the ready, so that Kev can blast him should he approach the porch again. A stray cat's one thing, but a stray, misanthropic cat gone feral who could potentially be on the attack... that's a whole 'nother thing.

I suppose it is possible that some of the stray cats we get are simply lost... but it's highly unlikely since our closest neighbor is more than a quarter mile down the road, and there aren't many neighbors anyway. It's far too common an occurrence, the stray cats and dogs. I would like to shoot the person who dropped this ugly cat off. Not kill, just shoot. Where it'd really hurt them for a good, long while.

N.C. was a stray kitten we kept. (N.C. stands for New Cat.) We couldn't possibly keep all the strays we get... I've tried to find homes for so many animals, but mostly I have to contact our County Animal Control office. And you know what happens to most of the pets that end up there...

My sister, Janet, just got another cat... a stray that was at my sister, Kathy's. This one is a beautiful cat, looks like a Siamese mix, Kathy told me. And it's pregnant. Dropping off a pregnant cat or dog is more common than most folks would believe. I am completely unable to understand the mentality of a person who would drop off any family pet, let alone one that's about to give birth. It would be more humane to tie the animal up and run over it with your car. Or shoot it. Or drown it. Or get the damn thing fixed to begin with. Jeez.