Oh, No, Not Again!

Late October 2009

Yep, there she was. Mama cat with four new babies! Unbelievable! What on earth? And where had they been? Under the deck, we finally decided.

Oh, and yes, the first family of four was still hanging out. Why not? The food was plentiful, fenced-in backyard, safe. If those people would just quit coming out, life would be quite good.

We were still unable to touch any of them. Mama would even hiss at me when I went out to feed them. I started feeding them in 3-4 dishes because Mama would swat at the first family while she was trying to eat. She was "old school" evidently. The adults must eat first. We did enjoy watching her "discipline" her families while we sat at the kitchen table. Great entertainment.

And . . . this second batch was not quite as pretty as the first family. The daddy cat was definitely not the dark black and grey tabby of the first family. 

There were three torties and one beautiful dark, solid grey kitten. One of the torties had a very sweet little face. The dark grey kitten I named Charky, the sweet-faced one, Miss Pretty, and, I'm ashamed to say the other two I called Ugly One and Ugly Two.

The second daddy was a big yellow, Scottish Fold breed. The cat in the picture is not our cat but looks just like him except this one looks clean and the cat in our backyard was dirty and scroungy looking. We called him Big Yellow.

In the telling of my story to friends, who thankfully didn't express to our faces how crazy they thought we were, someone mentioned that these were "feral" cats.

What? Feral Cats? Never heard of that . . .