Monday, July 15, 2019

The Feral Cat And Me


My new cat.  

I am working towards befriending a feral cat.  She has been on our farm for months now and is one of the prettiest tortoiseshell cats I've ever met (but please don’t tell Nefertiti I said that).  I have a feeling she hasn't always been feral, even though she looks quite young.  She seeks me out if I'm in the yard when she's around and talks to me from a safe distance, even following me for a bit if I walk away.  Today she was eyeing off the chooks and while most of them could give her a run for her money, George and Emu are tiny little Silkies and I don't think they'd be a match for her.  I ended up opening up the gate between George and Emu and their two ducks and letting the rooster have free access if he needs to chase the cat off.  I just hope she doesn't try.

When I found her looking at the chooks from the outside fence, she was under the boughs of our huge pine tree.  I had a chat with her and she sat and enjoyed out conversation even though I was telling her she had to go find mice somewhere else.  She stayed put so I went outside and under the branches to encourage her to move off.  She headed for the dam over the back so I veered left and added a few dead branches to Graeme's bonfire.  I turned and saw that the cat had come back for me.  She was standing on top of the rise calling to me.  I walked over and of course she moved off, so I sat quietly on the bank of the dam and little by little she made her way back to me, talking all the way.  In the end she got within about two feet of me and sat and talked for a while, then headed off towards the back paddock.  I got up and went back to the fire to have a chat with Graeme and in a few minutes the tortoiseshell was back looking for me.  I walked over and had another chat with her until she decided that we were friends now and I wouldn't object to her going back to watching the chooks.  She was wrong.  The trouble was once I was inside the house yard again she just returned once more to watching the chooks.  I left some cat food out for her that night on the front porch, well away from chooks.  She paid me a visit before I went to bed and snacked on the kibble while we talked.

I finally made true friends with the "feral" cat on Wednesday.  I'm pretty sure she must have been someone's cat at sometime.  She doesn't trust Graeme and runs for cover when she hears his deep voice, but she talks to me and has been following me at a safe distance for a few days.  When I let the chooks out this afternoon I heard her talking to me.  She was under the boughs of the big pine tree, just outside the chook pen – what I’m coming to think of as her usual spot.  After I'd collected the eggs and let Phoenix, my bachelor red rooster, out with the rest of the gang, I went outside to say hello.


I stood quietly and offered her my hand to sniff.  She came right up to it and had a sniff then rubbed her head against my hand.  I gave her a little pat and she took off.  I thought that was enough progress for one day, but the tortoiseshell had different ideas.  As I walked off she called to me so I turned around and found her following me.  I stopped; she came up to me and looked up.  I bent down and gave her a good pat, scratch around the ears and a back rub.  She lapped it all up. 

Eventually my back told me I couldn't take any more leaning over so I straightened up and said goodbye.  The cat followed me and I had a go at picking her up for a pat.  She loved it, turning this way and that for a better pat, but demanded to be put down very soon.  I put her down straight away so she’d learn that I won’t do anything that makes her feel uncomfortable, had another go of picking her up and patting her until it was time to say goodbye again, only for her to follow me, talking all the way.  I began to think she was going to be a permanent shadow of mine.  She came through the gate into the house yard with me and I headed for the house.  I got her some cat kibble and went back out.  She had a nice little snack in between asking for more pats and head scratches.  When she was finished I told her I had to sit down so I went over to our outdoor furniture.  She followed warily for a while, but mentioned that she knew there were big dogs about.  I promised her they were locked up because the chooks were out and she very carefully followed me to the chair keeping an eye out for big dogs in case I had lied.  She jumped onto the table and then proceeded to lap up all the pats and scratches she could get, throwing some head-butts in herself from time to time.  While she looks to be a young cat, she has a bit of offers of affection to catch up on I think. 

Venus trying to decide if being friends with a human was a good idea

After a while she climbed down onto my lap, but couldn't really settle there and chose to socialise from the table.   She did have a few tries at my lap, but just couldn't bring herself to stay there.  At one stage she saw Ambrosia looking out the window and she then sat with her back to me so she could keep an eye on that cat, while I continued to talk to her and pat her.  I finally had to say goodbye, yet again, to get the chooks in and she followed around and watched with interest.  I told her to put her thoughts somewhere else because chicken dinner wasn't on the menu.  She was a help though.  I had one Faverolle hen who just kept going around and around the base of the plumbago bush near the aviary where I couldn't get her.  The cat bounded under the bush in the general direction of the hen and the French Girl came tearing out and headed straight for the chook pen.  I told the cat that, while I was grateful for the help, I didn't think her motives were as pure as she was trying to convince me they were.

In the end, after a very long time getting to know the tortoiseshell (who I’ve decided to name Venus) I took her around the front, told her to stay put because I was letting the dogs out and returned to the back porch to do so.  She had stayed in the front for a little while, but Graeme saw her under the car when he came in. 

We caught up again on Thursday and Friday.  On Friday night it was raining so Venus once again came to the front door to let me know she was available for snacks and also that she was getting wet so could I please turn off the rain.  I opened the door followed by Tristan and Nefertiti.  Tristan saw Venus on the other side of the door and left in a huff.  Venus was very rude to Nefertiti, using language I can only assume she’s learned from the tougher element of the feral cats around here.  Nefertiti was shocked at the language, but being brought up in a much more sheltered environment chose to look outraged rather than return fire.  I’m sure Venus was asking me to put the three house cats outside in the rain so she could come inside and dry off.

I told Graeme it looks like we might end up with an outside cat, I doubt she and my three inside cats could ever be friends, but who knows.  If that is the case I'm going to have to get her to the vets to have her spayed. 

The number of non nomadic feral cats she could contribute to the farm is a very scary idea.


The clicking of the phone camera when I took these photos, disturbed Venus.  She wasn't sure if that little black rectangle was going to attack or not.  I let her sniff the phone and she settled down realising it wasn't a threat.

Thursday, July 04, 2019

A Visitor

We had a visitor at Spring Rock last week.  Graeme first noticed her in his machinery shed on Monday, hiding amongst the air seeder, header and other large farm implements.  He took a photo and left her to her own devices and told me of her visit when he came inside later that day.  Then, a day later, he met her again trying to dig her way into the house-yard by digging under a well planted gate post.  Her chances of getting in were considered slim so Graeme left her to it and came inside.  Cleo and Aslan weren't too impressed with her efforts to get into their yard and both puppies were very busy for quite some time watching her efforts and patrolling the gate area in case of invasion.  I imagine Cleo tried to introduce herself to the visitor - Cleo is that kind of dog and I did hear some yips and yaps from the general area of the gate - but with a sturdy fence and said well planted gate post between them introductions were about as far as it got.

The trouble started Wednesday afternoon.  Graeme came inside and told me if I wanted to meet our visitor in person she was just off the porch, amid a huge mess she'd made of the little garden at the bottom of the steps.  Once again Cleo was in attendance, keeping a respectful distance but not approving of this visitor at all.  Aslan felt he'd done all he could do yesterday and retired to his bed in the laundry and pretended there was no visitor at all.

I didn't blame Cleo's uncharacteristic tact with a new visitor.  Her usual technique when someone new arrives is to gallop up to this newcomer, try to jump into his or her arms and generally make herself hard to ignore.  This time Cleo was very quiet and just stood there watching the destruction of a poor, innocent garden.  I feel that my decorative, wire echidna might have been to blame.  Our visitor obviously felt she'd met a potential friend (no, not the big hairy creature she was sublimely ignoring) and had come along for a chat.

  
Cleo (that's her ear in the top right of the photo) carefully watching our visitor mangle my garden.

Our visitor was the largest echidna I've ever encountered (and as females tend to be larger than the males I'm reasonably sure this was a "she").  She was also the most laid back echidna I'd ever encountered.  When an echidna is discovered, no matter where it is at the time - soft earth, tar road, cement path etc - it usually tries to dig in and present only very sharp spines to whomever or whatever has discovered it.  This is a very effective tactic and has been perfected by generations of echidnas.  Once the echidna has dug itself into the ground there is no digging it out.  They get a very good hold on the earth and, with only wickedly sharp spines presented to the perceived threat (that is usually anything other than another echidna) the echidna is there for the long run.   I know this because I tried to move an obstinate echidna out of our chook pen once.  The end result was that the echidna stayed exactly where it was and I retired to the house after warning the chooks to stay away from their spiky visitor.  This little lady just kept working her way along my garden, moving soil here, uprooting a plant there, burying another plant along the way, in a very leisurely manner.  She wasn't in a hurry to hide from us, or perform the classic echidna digging in technique; she was just out for an exploration of these never before seen plants.  The large, hairy audience didn't bother her at all and she'd already met Graeme on two occasions and had no trouble with him, and if  she could cope with a large human and a large what-ever-that-overgrown-hairy-thing was another, smaller human wasn't going to faze her either.  

 
Our visitor, hiding behind one of my few surviving plants and having what I'm sure she thought was a well earned rest after she'd been busy remodelling my garden

Graeme arrived on the scene with a shovel ready to scoop our visitor up and carry her to pastures new anywhere else on the farm.  She wasn't too keen on leaving the comfy new spot she'd made for herself.  The remodelled garden was almost to her liking now and after all that work, not to mention the three day hike to get here, she wasn't budging.

I tried to help ease her onto the shovel, but all that happened was Graeme somehow managed to roll her onto my hand - soft side down thankfully.  I decided that as long as I had a good hold of her I may as well carry her to wherever was far enough away to hopefully prevent her from working on any more of my garden.  I balanced her on my right hand and used my left hand to very gingerly keep her in place.  Her manners were impeccable.  She didn't object to being carried, didn't struggle or scratch, she just enjoyed the ride and eventually poked her little nose out to admire the scenery as it passed her buy.  She had a lovely, warm, soft tummy and while she weighed a lot more than her size suggested, we got along very well.  I chatted to her as we walked along, Graeme close by with the shovel in case she slipped or started to object to being a few feet above the ground.  We talked about my preference for my garden they way it was before her visit, puggles she may have in the future (puggle is the name for a baby echidna) and how impressed I was with not being skewered by her spines.  Admittedly it was a one sided conversation but I'm sure she took in all I said.  Whether she agreed with my views on a neat and tidy, un-dug garden I can't say.

Our visitor and me having a chat as we walked to her new exploration area of the farm.

We finally stopped on the other side of our shearing shed where there was a whole paddock she could explore and hopefully, tasty ants she could munch on.   The main feature of this spot from Graeme's and my point of view was its distance from our house yard.  I must admit that had she confined her gardening skills to areas of grass or even under shrubs I would have welcomed her as another member of the menagerie, but my garden areas just weren't going to survive a prolonged visit from this young lady so I sadly placed her on the ground as gently as I could, once again thanked her for her good manners in not spiking me and watched her amble off to explore more of Spring Rock.

I just hope for my garden's sake that she finds somewhere she likes better than at the bottom of our porch steps.