A new meow
Yesterday, I jokingly told Mark that I'd gone
to the dump (the source of our current cat) and found another cat, who
I was now hiding in the barn. No, no --- I changed my mind ---
I'd stolen sweet little Bonnie from Mark's mom and had her hidden in
the barn. We both laughed and thought no more about it.
But this morning as I started to move the chicken tractors through
winter mud, I heard a plaintive meow come from the barn. I'd just
left Huckleberry sleeping soundly on the sofa, but I thought it was
possible he'd slipped out of the house and gotten his dainty paws wet
or been chased by Lucy. So I told the chickens to wait on me and
went to check the noise out.
Cowering behind our array of boxes and cast off belongings
was...Bonnie??? The little cat had most of her markings, a white
vest and white paws on an otherwise black fur coat. But this
little cat was smaller and oh so skinny when I finally tempted it to
let me pick it up. It was also a boy, just the same size
Huckleberry was when I found him --- reaching that gawky adolescent
stage where people tend to drop them off. (Later, Mark found a
towel on the road a mile from our house, one that hadn't been there
yesterday, confirming our belief that the little cat got dumped.)
Just two weeks ago, Mark's mom asked us if we wanted another cat.
And without even checking with each other Mark and I both said
"No!" Huckleberry's a handful all by himself. And yet ---
if a cat walks a mile through the woods to find us, can we really tell
it that we're going to renege on the contract humanity made with cats a
few thousand years ago? The truth is, I'm a sucker for
strays. Looks like we'll be taking the new cat to the vet
tomorrow, and if it gets a clean bill of health introducing it to
Huckleberry soon after. I guess I should be a little more careful
what I joke about!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Good luck with your new kitten! Strider has worked his way into our lives and hearts, although very few people have seen him --- he's still extremely skittish around strangers. He's curled up next to me in a damp heap as I write this and is the best purrer I've ever met.
You might want to bring Watson to the vet and make sure he doesn't have any of the bad contagious diseases before letting him join the flock. In our rural location, that's not as much of a problem, but my understanding is that urban cats can sometimes pass on really bad diseases.