We’ve had a stray cat show up. He’s very scrawny, but quickly became friendly. Looks a lot like our adopted Tom, but skinny. The shelters are full, as they ALWAYS are, no help there. I really don’t want a 3rd cat, 2 are one too many, but I don’t have the heart to put such a friendly guy down. Talk about starved, he was even eating small garden worms after a rain several days ago. Raw bluegill, ditto. He likes slightly salty scrambled eggs - we have plenty of extra eggs. (I’m now also using older raw eggs for fertilizer when planting, too. Make the hole slightly deeper > drop in the egg > drop a little potting or garden soil > drop in the plant > fill more soil around plant > stick in a plant label > water in.)
Anyway, we are trying to see if any of my daughter’s friends will take the new cat. He really does have a good disposition, except for climbing on things if let inside. Might offer to split the cost getting him checked out and fixed. BUT, if he’s a good mouser, I might let him stay. He’s so skinny, I have my doubts.* If he has serious medical issues, unless someone would assume the costs of care, I’ll HAVE to put him down.
*Our tabby is a better “mole’er” than a mouser, and occasionally kills a squirrel. Killing squirrels is ok by me, but then the cat is too lazy / full to go after mice efficiently! Our Tom is a lazy bum. Just super friendly.
BTW, the squirrels we do have have been chopping branch ends / leaflets out of our hickory trees, again. They seem to do this only to the hickories and not the oaks - not sure why? They don’t come down to feed on them even when the cats are not around. Might be making nests but dropping every other cutting? I’ve read some Foresters think they are literally bored.
We have an old tomcat that was born in the pile of construction waste that was left over from when we built our house in 2007. In March of 2008 we were sorting through the scrap heap, burning the small scraps and sorting out the lumber that was still useful for something.
I saw something fuzzy down in the pile and figured that it was a bunny rabbit nest. Nope. It was a litter of ~2 week old kittens. There were three charcoal gray and one yellow tabby. The yellow tabby went home with one of my 4H ham curing project kids. Two of the gray ones met with untimely ends. Steve went through the serpentine belt on my '99 Dodge pickup and Shanaynay got dog-chomped, but old Snoopy is still kicking.
Anyway, Snoopy absolutely loves raw fish. He will eat fish scraps until he can't choke any more down and if I don't keep them coming at a rate that suits him I'm liable to wind up with a bloody leg because he will literally use me for a climbing tree to get onto the butchering table.
It's quite a nuisance, actually, but he's been here almost as long as we have so I let him get away with pretty much whatever he wants to do.