Another Cat Who Went to Heaven (On Earth)

November 13 2022

This is a horse blog… but cats are horses too!

Cosmic things are swirling around in the Universe. It’s supplying us with answers we didn’t even know we had questions to.

It starts with Edgar Raven. We’ve been friends with Edgar for over 2 years now, ever since he tried to raise a brood in Connie’s Big Tree. (You can read that ultimately tragic story starting with April 2021 on Forevermore the Raven blog.)

Edgar still shows up most days asking for (well… demanding, really) some food. He’ll first go to Connie’s place and get some treat, then he’ll show up in my tree and holler at me. We’ll give him just about anything - a dead mouse, chicken scraps, egg, cat food, dry or wet.

Connie put an old can of cat food out one day last week, and instead of Edgar eating it, Connie looked out her window and saw a gray cat eating it! Now, we have Oscar Wilde Cat, a badass black cat that roams up and down the crick, but we hadn’t seen this cat around before.

The next day I saw the gray cat trying to drink out of a water trough. Connie went and got some more wet cat food and set it out and the cat was so skinny and starved, it let Connie pet him while he ate.

So, Operation Cat Rescue starts. Connie got him more food and water - he was terribly skinny and dehydrated - and set up a little box with a blanket in the sun. He was happy to snuggle in there warming up, and eating, while we were outside cleaning a storage unit. Then he felt so right at home already that he walked into the storage unit and supervised while we moved boxes and things around.

We decided to lock him in the big pump house at night, with an old cat box with a cover and several blankets, and all the food and water he wanted, mainly to let him rest and keep Oscar from harassing him if he showed up.

And, in honor of a starving cat Barney that was found and rescued at the Lost n’ Lava ride in 2015 and subsequently adopted by Helen, we named him Barnaby. He’s a tom cat, not sure how old.

He loves Connie’s big dog Stoney. He loves to help with things if you’re working outside - no way this was a wild cat. (And really, nobody would drive this far out to dump a cat.) He must have once lived at some ranch with people and dogs because he’s very personable. 

And he loves his new home, his private Barnaby’s Pump House, where he’ll snuggle into his many-blanketed bed day or night, and eat up all the food and water we can give him, and show up to visit if anybody walks in that area and calls him. He’s already put on a ton of weight and looks and acts like a regular cat now.

And - possibly even more cosmic, Barnaby showed up here the very same day that my brother’s beloved Bear cat went to Cat Heaven. What does this mean!?!? It means something.

Barnaby is the perfect quiet gentleman now residing at The Flying Cloud Retreat.

He has adopted this place and that’s it. The end.

A Bird in the Hand

August 4 2017

So *now* what am I supposed to do?

I walk up to the house, and I first see Audrey, the wispy terrorist cat, lounging ever-so-regally-catlike upon a step. For some reason she reminds me of Queen Cersei, smug, supercilious, so in control of things.

Next I see, two steps down, a fluffy scruffy baby bird, facing Audrey, peeping at the world. (Finch? Oriole?)

Well. What am I supposed to do? Let the terrorist continue terrorizing this little chick? It's obviously already been in the cat's mouth at some point, though I don't see anything broken or bleeding.

I scoop up the birdlet, who squawks in major indignation and consternation. Audrey glares at me, Really?

I follow the procedure I always do with injured birds who fly into a window and stun themselves or get caught by a cat: I drop some soft paper towels into a box, put the bird in the box and close it and put it inside the house in a quiet corner for a while - locking the cat outside. Either the bird will die or revive.

This little birdie revives somewhat, and after a while is chirping away inside the box. Well. *now* what do I do? Audrey is still on the front steps, wondering where her little bird toy went. I decide to put the little bird back outside where it was, and lock Audrey inside. Maybe the birdie's parents are somewhere around. They *should* be around, anyway.

So, I lock Audrey inside, scoop up the chick, and set it back outside in the grass near where I found it. It can flap its wings, but it makes no attempt to fly away or rescue itself. It chirps away, chirp, chirp, chirp, for an hour. Not a parent in sight. Inside, Audrey is getting obnoxious. Can't leave the cat locked in the house all day and night till the bird figures something out or stops making such noise.

So *now* what do I do? I let the cat out the front, but go scoop up the bird again. It struggles, then snuggles in my grasp again. We're old friends now. I go to the back yard and set it in the grass, but at the rate it's chirping, Audrey will be around shortly to resume baby bird terrorism. 

I scoop up my bird friend again, and take it further out back, to near the creek, far enough from the cat, but, I'm sure, near other predators. Really, what else can I do but turn it loose. I set it up on a tree branch… and wish it well. 

Mother Nature will take care of it, one way or another.

Watch Out Kitties

Monday May 15 2017

Mo, the big black cat, is always getting in fights with some gray tomcat who keeps trying to sneak in to get his cat food. There's always a horrible yowling caterwauling ruckus when they clash. I run out to try to yell them apart. Half the time Mo comes out on top, and half the time he gets the crap beat out of him, but he won't stop (Audrey the Wispy Terrorist just avoids conflict, though knowing her, the tomcat is terrified of her).

I heard some awful caterwauling the other morning and ran out to see if I could find the cats. As I stood by the crick trying to locate them, this great horned owl flushed from a tree above me.

He may have been drawn by the ruckus… either for a meal, or else he's wondering what the heck is going on and would they shut up already. 

He's beautiful and I love owls, but I hope he wasn't looking for a meal, and I sure hope he doesn't get Mo or Audrey!

Don't Eat My Cats

Wednesday March 9 2016

Great horned owls will roost up both cricks here, and occasionally I hear them at night. They don't normally hang out around the ranch during the day, what with all the horse/people/dog activities. But in the morning when I went out to feed Dudley, there, right on the crick by the driveway and not much more than horse head-height in a cottonwood tree, was a big beautiful great horned owl.

With spring leaves yet to sprout, it was easy to spot the big lump of an owl sitting in the branches.

He wasn't worried about me at all; I could get pretty close. 

*I* was worried, about the cats that roam the ranch. All 4 of them would make nice juicy morsels for the owl, or the family he's probably about to raise (his female is likely on a nest up one of the cricks). Twice, we lost 3 of 4 kittens. It was surely either owls or coyotes that got them. I can still cry over Sinatra, who was The Best Kitten Ever.

The owl in fact stuck around till nightfall. All cats were accounted for next day, but they would be such easy pickings. They don't seem to be aware of danger that can come from the sky.

I love owls, and I love having the owls around, but Don't Eat My Cats!

Kitty Love

February 28 2014

Who woulda thunk the big guy would be such a big softie?

Dudley seemed to love breathing on a soft fluffy cat as much as Audrey Hepburn loved being inhaled by a big warm horse nostril.

Cat!

Saturday February 12 2011

I wander up a hill in this Montana forest, savoring the winter snow.


The snow is heavy and wet, dragging at my feet. Deer tracks litter the snow, telling the story of a busy forest over a highway that's hidden in the summer. Without snow, the forest always looks empty. It's not.

I clumsily slop and slosh and half slide along deer highways and down a snow covered logging road - until I stop dead in my own tracks.

Cat tracks!


Small, but unmistakably (I'm hoping - I'm pretty sure) cat tracks.

Has to be a bobcat. The tracks cross this logging road and go straight up the hill.


The cat is long gone, but of course I have to follow. Up I scramble, slipping, falling, slithering, panting, grabbing onto roots and brush to keep from sliding back down; ridiculously, maddeningly graceless as I follow pawprints of an undoubtedly graceful, efficient, effortless cat.



I can't read snow as well as dirt, but with the softened, sunken print in this softened, gently melting snow, I'd say the tracks came from the night before. The cat was on a mission, tracks undeviating, heading straight up the mountainside. On a southern facing slope with sparse trees, the snow disappears, and with it, the tracks and any hint that anything passed this way.


I slide back down the hill (actually sit on my coat and slide down) and follow the tracks where they came from. Still a straight line - across the road back into the forest, over the snow-covered little creek (water flowing beneath, snow thick enough that I don't fall in), until the tracks finally fade in ice.


The snow will melt, the tracks will disappear.

But the cat will still be here... somewhere.

Attack

Sunday August 15 2010

Dusk comes to Owyhee, and the great horned owls are out, crying, (not hooting), restless, agitated, silhouetted against the sky, flying up and down the creek. That as-yet-unidentified owl (great horned? long-eared? I think it's a screech) is making its odd high-pitched yell nearby.

The horses are spooked down the pasture and they swirl in circles, kicking up dust, stopping to turn and face the creek, heads up, ears forward, alert; then they come running back to the house.

The neighbor's herd is sprinting through their pastures, clattering across the rocky creek. Something is setting them all off.

Night falls. The horses are staying close to the house, eating hay in the back pen... which is a bit odd. They are spooked again and bolt around the hay feeders, snorting, whirling around to stop and stare at the creek thirty yards away.

Then the yelling starts. One time, two times - I think it's the screech owl. The wailing gets louder and longer - it's definitely not an owl. A rabbit dying? The screaming is moving through the trees along the creek, 30 yards away. An owl got a rabbit and is flying with it? But the screaming gets louder. More chilling.

I grab a flashlight and sprint outside. I run to within 10 feet of the trees and brush along the creek and scan with my flashlight, but now the screaming has stopped.

But the movement in the brush/trees/creek has not.

Something is moving in there, on the ground. It's not an owl. It's something heavy. Possibly something dragging something. The victim is not a rabbit. The heavy thing is not a coyote.

I so wish I could see in the dark, like so many creatures, but I see nothing. Austin the dog has come out with me. He's not visibly scared, no raised hackles, and he's not barking... but he's not going forward into the trees like he normally would. He's got his nose up in the air sniffing.

My hackles are raised.

But I can't stop looking. I want to see.

I walk to our creek crossing 30 feet away so I can cross to the other side. Austin follows. I walk through the creek, swinging the flashlight somewhat nervously, trying to penetrate into the blackness, listening fiercely for anything - but it is now dynamically silent, and I know that something is in there.

I start to climb the other bank. Austin stops. Normally he would follow me. Normally he would shoot past me in search of rabbits, day or night. But Austin's not going a step further.

I shine my light all around. The silence is electric. The atmosphere is charged. The hair on my arms and neck are standing straight up. My flashlight falls upon two eyes up the trail, looking my way. My heart stops a moment and adrenaline shoots through me even as I identify it as a deer. The female deer is seemingly wandering aimlessly - though maybe I'm anthropomorphizing and jumping to conclusions.

My heart is pounding from the adrenaline now, and if I hear a crack of a twig from the creek I will jump into orbit. The deer takes off into the brush. I look back at Austin, who looks back at me, You go right on ahead, if you like, I'll wait for you right here.

I contemplate moving up along the creek to peer down in it exactly where I heard the... heavy thing dragging something heavy, but a chill wave of goosebumps washes over me, and my feet are sort of stuck where they are. They don't want to move forward. I decide I don't quite have the nerve.

I turn back toward the creek (keeping the light shining toward the Black Hole) - Austin bolts out of the creek ahead of me, happy to lead the way back toward shelter.

I go back inside, bursting with curiosity and the sad knowledge that we humans are so helplessly clueless about what goes on around us.

Half an hour later, the horses run around their pen again, and I hear snorting.

Perhaps a meal had just been finished and the predator was passing by.

I know something went on out there. It wasn't a coyote. Coyotes are a dime a dozen around here. I've seen one near the herd at times, and they ignore it. I've actually seen Finneas chase one. The horses don't act like that because of a coyote. That dying scream was from a fawn, and that Something Heavy that dragged it was not a coyote.

It was a cougar.