Sunday, June 19, 2011

Feral Cats

We have a cat problem here at Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park... exacerbated, in part, by clue-free asshats who leave the lids on the community dumpsters open after depositing their trash, which turns said dumpsters into a VERY popular and well-attended cat soup kitchen.  I've been startled out of my shoes by cat explosions when approaching the dumpsters to drop off my trash... and I'm talking sumthin' on the order of 25 or so of the damned things, all bolting pell-mell out of the dumpster and into my face or thereabouts.  It can be unnerving, to say the very least.

It looks like our cat population has increased by at least four recently.  I've been entertained by this small cat-clan... momma and four kittens... these last three nights while sitting out on the verandah during After Dinner Whiskey Hour and I have to admit: they are cute lil buggers.  I didn't have my camera at the ready until tonight and true to form our resident kittens decided NOT to cavort in my general vicinity, opting instead to hang around the neighbor's premises.  Yet I still managed to get a couple o' few shots.

Very laid back lil kittehs.  I think the heat has sumthin' to do with this.

One adventurous kitteh decided to scope me out from the safety of the tree, about ten feet from me.

Mom arrives on the scene.

Dinner time!

I won't think they're so damned cute the first time the family jumps into my face at the dumpsters.

Update, later that same day:  Someone's been hangin' around BLHTP's dumpsters.



Heh.  OK, no more cats.  This post contains EIP's entire lifetime supply.

16 comments:

  1. Feral cats... so-called tame cats... grumble, grumble.

    v-word = anties

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  2. Say it ain't so! Kitty pix on EIP???

    Sigh. Double sigh.

    Well, maybe that chick from 'Nova will be impressed...

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  3. I have a cat problem IN MY HOUSE. I would gladly send a couple of them to you. Have to make up a story to tell my daughter though.

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  4. I have a new kitten at the Lazy B. I'll post pics soon. You may have a cat problem, but you probably don't have a mouse problem. And they can be entertaining.

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  5. In the wikipedia under the "Siege of Paris" there's a neat menu from when the food supply dwindled and they had to kill the animals in the zoo to eat.

    But a common menu item was "Le Chat flanqué de Rats" (luh shah flahnkay duh Raht) I give you pronunciation help in case you venture outside of Paris into the wide-open country.

    Having gone to survival school and eaten grasshoppers and ants, that would be a pretty damned nice meal I think.

    For the squeamish, the way you eat ants is to scoop them onto whatever you are going to eat, and smash them dead to keep them from crawling back up your throat (important step), and for grasshoppers you have to pull their legs off for the same reason.

    Anyway, a handful of ants is equal to a steak dinner in protein.

    One of the french movies I like is "Au Revoir Les Enfants" which is during another Allemande war. When they go to Le Grand Cerf restaurant one of them asks the waiter if the Lapin is really Chat, and he assures them it is Lapin, however (hold your nose) they have to use margarine! Oh God no!

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  6. Buck - kittens are cute, no matter whether you are a cat fan or not. And that momma looks like she's barely out of kitten-hood herself.

    My dad used to say - cats...are fun to watch. He was right.

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  7. Ivan: Heh.

    Well, maybe that chick from 'Nova will be impressed...

    Hunh? What chick from 'Nova?

    I would gladly send a couple of them to you.

    Ummm... thanks but NO thanks, Cabbie.

    Lou: We (as in the residents of BLHTP) DO have a cat problem. I see P-Ville Animal Control out here all the time, but the cats are obviously winning.

    ...however (hold your nose) they have to use margarine! Oh God no!

    Heh. Men after my own coeur.

    My dad used to say - cats...are fun to watch.

    Are you absolutely CERTAIN there wasn't a muttered postscript appended to that? I have thoughts in that space but I'll spare them in deference to the cat lovers amongst us. But: point taken... which is why I took the camera out last evening.

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  8. Buck, you know...the chick on the eHarmony video.

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  9. Ah... VILLA-'Nova. Sorry. That went right over my head. The first thang **I** thought of was PBS... and I went "hunh?", for obvious reasons.

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  10. Difficult targets, too.

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  11. Your leaping cat reminded me of this cat.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmjTHmIeUqg
    I don't know about you but I'm awfully glad we have kittehs over here instead.

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  12. Thank The Deity At Hand for thick glass, eh?

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  13. Buck, maybe your aim is not so steady these days. I find cats to be as easy to pick off as ducks on a pond.

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  14. They zig-zag when they run, Andy. And they're FAST.

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  15. Well Buck, you've got a point. The first couple are pretty easy pickin's, but once they scatter it does become more challenging.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.