her Highness, Lady Pearl
Ongoing
Feral Saga
The Ferals are an ongoing tale of Sorrow and Delight.
The sorrow, of course, is when one disappears and you never
know what happened to them. Also, often
I’ll see a cat with a freshly-killed bird in its mouth. I’m glad they are eating well, but I love
birds and am sorrowful for them.
But not all cats are good hunters. Just the other day I saw Zeena looking very
unhappy at a slow-moving spot in the road.
I walked quietly over to where she was and saw that there was a mole creeping
towards Zeena. She was scared of it and
was backing away. The mole, being blind,
had no idea it was going right towards a terrifying predator. Zeena, however, was no threat to this mole.
He calmly kept up his pace until he reached the side of the road and got lost
in the tall grass. Zeena just looked at
me and cried. Then she took off in the
other direction, just in case the mole might change his mind and come back.
I feed the Ferals twice a day, between 7 and 8 o’clock. Every morning and night, they get fed. They are pretty much used to it by now and
are usually hanging out in the front yard, waiting for me to dish out the
goodies. I do a quick head count and
then leave out one more pile of food than there are cats. That way there is little waste. But sometimes a cat will be busy elsewhere
and get to the yard too late.
I don’t want to be running outside to feed them every ten minutes, so I would prefer it if they would show up on time for dinner. But how to insure that everyone knows it's feeding time?
Then it occurred to me that I needed to call them to dinner. I looked around and found an old bell, the
kind that hotels used to use. You hit it on the top and it dings rather loudly.
I started ringing the bell once when I get to
the porch to gather up the food. Then after I have dished up
all the food and am about to go out in the yard to give it to them, I hit the
bell twice more. It Works! When I first hit the bell, cats come running
from all corners of the mobile home park.
By the time I get to the yard, I can get an accurate reading of how many
cats get fed that particular feeding time.
But the other day, I was inside when I heard the bell
ring. Curious, I went out to see what it
was. Lo, there was a cat (Pearl ,I think), sitting on the gate, reaching over with her paw to hit the dinner bell.
Yes, they did get an extra treat that day – but then I moved
the bell to another, less accessible, location.
