Halloween can be a time of fun, but it brings new worries to pet owners. We have a family of well-meaning children on the east side of our house; however, when they take in a litter of kittens, we never see the kits again. I'm not sure what they do -- I suspect that they kill the poor little mites with kindness ... and cow's milk. The kittens' mother is a stray, not truly feral, because she will let Joy or me touch her. However, she does not like to be picked up, and she has never shown any interest in coming inside ... I spotted the 4some: 2 white ones that might be Siamese mix, 1 yellow tabby, and 1 gray. Skippy John, the male Siamese stray, is probably 1 of the fathers, and I suspect he'd kill the litter once he found them. It's a no-win situation for the little things, either way.
Worse, Flea went missing. We don't know how she got out of the house, but when I went to feed the cats, there was no small black and red tabby ... Fiona looks like a half-grown kitten, but Joy thinks that she's the same age as our other 2 half-grown cats, Bojangles and Margot, named after Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Margot Fonteyn. I went through the house with a flashlight, went through the front and back yard ... no Fiona. Every 15-30 minutes, I'd repeat the process -- that's how I found the kittens -- but no little cat. Finally, Joy went out on the back porch and called. She swore she heard a tiny mew ... but no cat in sight. I came out with the flashlight, and two orange eyes peered at me from high up the tree. It was no owl; it meowed. We fought our way through the underbrush (yeah, it's time to trim bushes again!). I climbed on a low branch; Joy got food to tempt Fiona into position.
Finally, she climbed down to a cut-off branch where I could grab 1 leg and a tail ... Fiona protested, but I hauled her down ... For a while, I could tell she was debating on jumping onto the roof, then decided (thankfully) that it was too far for her short legs to reach.
Oh, and I've finished 5 pages (1,000 words) for my NaNoWriMo weekend.
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