Caution Cats Crossing!

I know that I have mentioned (most probably cursed about) speeding drivers in our little village. Why is it that a 40 sign is read as the minimum speed on the road and let's see what fun it is to skid and slide round corners and why bother to stop at those big red signs... who is going to stop us???

Anyway, daily I fret and worry and check the whereabouts of the cats... usually fast asleep on the bed! Morris has a habit of lurking over the road and suddenly shooting out from the bushes and straight across the road without looking and we have now banned Basil from his daily walks with us. He always walked with us when we take Alfie for his daily trot, but one day last year we were talking to a new neighbour who has a beautiful German Shepherd cross, and Basil heard our voices. Being the nosy cat that he is, he leaped over the wall to see what we were doing, and ran straight under a car that was coming up the road..... He came out from between the wheels, saw the dog and turned around, and ran straight back into the front wheel of the same car. Bouncing off the wheel, he took off up the road like a rocket, cut in front of the car and disappeared. I was convinced that I would find him dead

When I could find him that was. I called and searched everywhere but he was nowhere to be found. Rob in the meantime went into the house... and there was Basil, sitting on the dining table with a black tyre mark on his head, but absolutely fine!

Anyway, digressing as usual, we now make sure that the cats are in and safe before we go off now.
Alfie too has his own troubles as he is now becoming an old man, we have had him for over 12 years and he was at least 2 when I found him, so adding that up.... and he is getting very hard of hearing and sadly his eyes are clouding too.

So, a couple of weeks ago I saw some warning signs on Facebook!! Where else I ask myself!

Aren't they gorgeous?

I ordered two from Ingrid, and literally the next day there was a message from Post Net to say there was a package for me! I had an idea of how and where to mount them, and Rob did the rest!

We re-used a bird-feeder-holder that our neighbour had made for us, and with some clever drilling and hammering, Rob sorted it out.

You can see how close to the road we are.

And here it is...

Attached firmly to the garden wall!

Hopefully people will take note and slow down and think about it. Maybe they will slow down to read it and have a chuckle.

But if it can save the life of any of my cats, or any 'refugee' AKA feral, then I am happy.

Refugee Upgrade!

Those of you have have remained faithful to my writings (even with the lengthy gaps in between each post), will have read the words 'feral cats' several times! Some of these precious souls have become part of our family, some have been homed to special people, some were released after trapping and neutering and have never been seen again.....and some have simply remained where they were trapped and later released, wobbly from the anaesthetic, but free to live without breeding.

Two of these gorgeous girls live just around the corner, and because they were trapped and fixed in July and come from Jacobsbaai, it was fitting to give them names beginning with...J

So Jasmine and Juniper they are! Lovingly referred to by us as 'The Refugees'. Our wonderful neighbours gave us a lovely kennel for them, and so they are warm and fed and safe and happy. Jasmine has become tameish.... she sits on the wall where I feed and waits until she sees me walk into the driveway of the lovely people who let me meander up their drive daily to feed them. Once the food is down I can stroke her, but not Juniper, she is still very wary and waits in the background until all the lovey-dovey stuff is done!

The Refugees little home and garden!

Vienna Sausage To The Rescue!

The title may be a tad misleading, I have visions of you imagining a Vienna sausage with a bejewelled cape and a mask, ready to swoop down and save humanity!

Well, it isn't that dramatic, but in a small way, the heroic act of one sausage, saved our feral female cat Bella from a lifetime of pregnancy, unwanted litters of kittens, and more and more problems as each litter grew to maturity and starting breeding!

Read on;

As you may (or may not know), there is a little feral cat family living just over the wall in the farmland behind our neighbour Emma's garden. For several years we have been feeding Blackjack, who recently disappeared from our lives, and the really sad thing is that we don't know what has happened to him. We have searched, called, asked around and searched again, to no avail. We only hope that he moved on and is safely eating someone else's food.

Then last year a fat tortie (tortoiseshell) female arrived in Emma's garden. We tried to trap her but she managed to avoid being caught for a week or so, and then I had to return the trap so we planned to try again in the new year.

Which we did..... try that is, but each time she just would not go into the trap. We tried tuna, salmon, biltong, special pouches of kitten food.... but nothing worked. I even borrowed a second trap because Blackjack kept nudging Bella away from the original trap!

BUT... we were suddenly aware of a gorgeous black and white fellow who arrived one morning with Blackjack and Bella. Young enough to be her kitten! But a teenager, not a tiny. But Blackjack was not to blame because he had been neutered several months before Bella's arrival. So the newcomer was named Peanut, and as he was quite happy to head into the trap, we carted him off to the vet and he came home a little sore, very bewildered, but safely 'fixed'!

And Bella simply chuckled at us all.
And carried on eating and getting fat!

Daily Emma and I looked at her and I said 'We must get her fixed' and Emma said 'She looks pregnant!'....... and life happened and the weeks passed.

Until one day a few weeks ago, Emma called me to say 'Bella's got three kittens!' I went next door, peered over the back wall into the farmland.... and there, sure enough, were three kittens. Two gingers and one darker. But not teeny ones! They had open eyes, they were playing and leaping on each other, chasing leaves and stretching in the sun.

And Bella watched them proudly and looked at us!

So, I knew it was now desperately important to trap her. Goodness knows where she had hidden them until they were big enough to be seen, but there they were. And she would be pregnant again in no time (if she wasn't already).

Emma started giving her extra food for the kittens, and every day Bella came closer and closer to Emma to get her ration of Vienna sausages, one at a time, that she took back over the wall to the waiting babies.
On Monday Michelle dropped the trap off.

Yesterday I used one of Emma's Viennas as bait and set the trap.

I hid round the corner to watch. Both Bella and Peanut arrived, but Peanut isn't very keen on Viennas, so he had a sniff and moved on to the pellets!

Bella walked round the trap which was covered with a towel. She sniffed and sniffed and finally moved to the open door. She stuck her head in and I held my breath. But the smell of the sausage was all she needed.

She went in completely.... and I waited for what seemed hours but was maybe 10 seconds until.....clunk. The trap sprung, the door closed and we had her!

That is one of the best sounds in the world! A door closing on a trapped cat, especially if the cat inside is the one that needed catching.

Off to the vet we went and we picked her up yesterday afternoon. She spent last night in a large dog-size travelling crate, with food and water and room to move and this morning Rob and I carried the box over to Emma's back garden and opened the door expecting her to shoot out like a bullet from a gun.
She walked out quietly, looked at us all gathered there and went off over the wall to her family.
Emma went to peep and they were all together.

Next month?

Three kittens....

I hope that Emma keeps a good supply of Viennas!

Spring and Things!

So, here we are, in theory winter is over, spring is officially here, and we can look forward to a long, hot, dry slide into Christmas and 2018!!

Scary isn't it?

Anyway, before we all get maudlin, let me bring you up to date on The Week That Was.
I think I mentioned that I wanted to make a house for the cats? For Juniper (fixed), Jasmine (read on), and Jennifer (to be fixed). I started looking round for suitable containers and eyeing the wheelie bins that had been left on the road after bin collection, working out which one I could 'borrow' for a very good cause.

Then, suddenly, problem was sorted. Emma and Coert (our wonderful neighbours), had a small kennel that was not being used and they were happy to give it to me. So, round it came in a wheelbarrow and I cleaned it out, lined it with a couple of large empty birdfood bags, a piece of carpet (brand new) and a fluffy blanket (ditto). Rob and I drove round the corner and placed it in the corner of the garden where the cats seem to hang out.

It's beautiful, waterproof and warm.

And I think that they are using it because l have seen Juniper sitting just outside the doorway very often at food delivery times.

Cat-Trap Boogie!

I know that I have mentioned before (several times I bet), the fact that we have several pre-owned cats living loose and fancy free in the village. I know for a fact that many of them were simply left behind when the owners moved, and others have been especially brought into the village and dumped.
Disgusting behaviour? Yes. But sadly that is what I expect these days from the so called humans who live here.

And of course, these cats roam around until they find somewhere to settle, usually in someone's garden...... we have Blackjack who has lived here for a couple of years and who comes regularly every evening for his plate of Friskies! He is neutered and therefore cannot chase the ladies and leave offspring scattered around! And our three ex-pre-loved cats have accepted him, although he has still not accepted Rob and me. He still hisses and scuttles backwards out of our reach when we put his food down! One day maybe......

Blackjack having supper!

Market Day by the Sea!

We have a lot of 'pre-owned' cats here in Jacobsbaai. We know that because we have personally homed, loved and put to rest under the bushes in the back garden, three that made our home their permanent base, and we have three more that are now firmly settled, namely Basil, Morris and Kindle! We homed Sage to the nursery where she chats to the customers and tells them that she is never fed! Wally went to our friends in Philadelphia (not the American town I hasten to add...... he would have had a problem now with the new President, being an alien! Hmmmm... cat or president...I let you decide!) Blackjack comes every evening for his supper but still won't let me get closer than one meter!!

Blackjack popping in for supper!

And there are others who have been left to fend for themselves when the owners move on, or dumped by those wonderful people who make life so rewarding.

So when Amy, who lives round the corner and is passionate about cats (and who has personally trapped, neutered and released at least a dozen cats, and who puts out food and water every day) asked me if I would like to help with a new privately run animal shelter situated in Vredenburg and long overdue, I said yes!

Let me qualify that 'yes'.

I am happy to do the behind-the-scenes-stuff. I can provide food, give donations when and if I can and make things to sell at their market days.

But. I cannot work with the animals. I get too emotional and want to bring every dog or cat or donkey or duck or whatever home with me. I would be in tears daily, and I would end up being extremely rude to the people whose animals are removed for the animals sake. I would enjoy chaining said owners to a pole, a short chain with a barbed-wire collar, with no food, water or shelter from the elements. I could happily shove fireworks into various outlets on their bodies and kick them every time I walked by. Oh yes, and make them fight each other and leave them bleeding in the street.

Anyway, I digress!

So I happily volunteered to man the stall at a market day on Saturday. It was held at St Helena Bay at a venue I had never heard of and didn't know existed! Never mind, I bravely set off with a box of bits and pieces from Amy plus the cash box (boosted with our first donation from Rob), my water and my chair and eventually (a few minutes late as I did get a little lost and had to backtrack), I met up with Ronel who had by then organised the table, put the cloth on and had arranged most of the items for sale! After we had introduced ourselves to each other, she left to go and do a few house visits and check up on the dogs that lived there. I must add that Ronel started the shelter, appropriately called 'Lighthouse Animal Shelter' and Amy designed the posters.

To the point!

If I Could Talk To The Animals.......

Remember these words.... 'This is not the post that I had planned for today, that one is written and waiting to be shared with you, but sometimes life gets in the way and plans have to change.'?

It's happened again.

I have shared interesting, funny, odd and sometimes sad, snippets of our life with cats. Daffy and Dilly were the first feral cats to share our lives, and since then we have welcomed Dopey, Basil, Kindle and Morris (who has had his visit to Aunty Vet and is now recuperating in our garden!) Dilly has been an 'oddball' since he arrived, never taming down to become a full member of the household, but tame enough to be around for meals and on a cold night to spend an hour or so on my lap before meandering off to pass the night in his 'nest' in one of my kruiwas.

Dilly's nest!

He would never allow me to carry him, and refused to stay inside any room that did not have a way out. He disappeared once for three months before re-appearing as if nothing had happened. He regularly stayed away for a few days at a time, but always returned.

Dilly and friend in the garden.

Until last week.

Come In Number 4...............!

A couple of weeks ago we had a fleeting glimpse of a small tabby cat that raced through the garden and over the wall and down the road. Not far behind was Blackjack, the large, long-haired feral that we are feeding in the garden. As wild as a goat, he waits for us to put food out most evenings and glares at us through yellow slits if we get too close.

We didn't see the tabby again until the week before last, when she (as I saw) came into the garden again and cried for food. Her haunches had that caved-in look that a really hungry cat gets, and she was obviously living rough. Also wild and terrified, she wouldn't let us get anywhere near her, but as we backed away, she came to eat, cramming the food into her mouth as fast as she could.

This happened for three evenings running. Rob and I watched her eat and then he asked me what I was going to call her. I thought about it, and then he said 'She is a small tabby, more like a tablet'
And I said 'Kindle!'

So Kindle she is! It also is the name for a litter of kittens which I thought was very appropriate. And we are trying to kindle a friendship with her.

Kindle arriving for food.

From Feral to Fireside!

Today is National Feral Cat Day.

We shall be celebrating of course, we have four of them! My sister will be celebrating even more than us as they have about thirteen at the moment, with the latest one Beckett, slowly moving in. He has progressed from hiding near the shed and slinking away as soon as he sees movement, to sitting on the patio chairs and spending the odd night on the computer chair! Next stop, on the bed with all the others! Phez (remember the kitten in the coffee mug?) has welcomed him with open paws and has probably told him about the plusses of being an inside cat! In a cushy household!

Daffy and Dopey trying out the couch! Alfie on the cushion above!

Catalyst!

According to my 'Pocket Oxford Dictionary', catalyst means 'a person or thing that precipitates change.
Well, that describes my daughter Catherine to a T. She is known to her friends as Cat, a fitting name for her as it turns out!

She is involved now with several animal welfare groups in Dubai – one group who call themselves “Feline Friends” and another named the “Bin Kitty Collective”.  These are all dedicated, wonderful people who took it upon themselves to do something about the sad problem of feral and abandoned cats. Although the cats do a fantastic job of keeping the rat problem at bay, their numbers were increasing alarmingly. So began the TNR, or 'Trap Neuter Release' programme. In the last year, she has trapped over 30 cats. She pays most of the vet bills for these (some people do donate from time to time), she feeds them and tries to find homes for the few that are tame enough to handle. She helps with fund raising and supports anything that helps the cats.

Yesterday she sent this mail to everyone that she knows! Count the cats in the photo below:

Thanks to Cat

'A security guard at a labour camp in Dubai called this week pleading for help with a large number of stray animals that are living in their camp.
On investigation it was found that about 40-50 cats, and a few dogs, are living in the labour camp and being cared for by the labourers to the best of their ability and means. These animals are also breeding unchecked.
The cats and dogs need to be trapped, transported to the vet, assessed and neutered asap, They will also need to be relocated and the tamer ones possibly even homed as the labour camp is moving and these animals will essentially be abandoned as the labourers do not get to take them along.
Several animal groups in Dubai are mobilising to manage this but we desperately need help with funds to cover:
- vet costs and neutering
- transportation
- food
Many thanks.'

If anyone would like to contribute towards this please click through to the Fundrazr campaign or contact her via her blog

While we are on the subject of cats, one of our ex-ferals has interesting sleeping places! Rob came down to make coffee one day last week, to find a different 'fruit' in our fruit bowl!

Our squashed fruit!

It turned out to be Dilly (well named!). A 'purrberry' or a 'catapple'?

Parked for the day!

He also loves to lie in one of my wheelbarrows and watch the world go by.

A pansy by any other name!

And, this is him squashed into a wooden planter that Rob made!

Maybe I should have called him 'Weed'?

He was a feral, he is one of the lucky ones.

There's a Wally on my stoep!

The story of Phez led me to share one more rescued cat story with you! Remember the photo of 'Twin' cat coming to eat at the table? Well, here is another one of him to remind you.

Thin and hungry, our Twin feral.

He first appeared in our garden over a year ago, thin and hungry, and would sneak into the house at night through the cat-flap to finish off the 'crumblies' that the others had left. Never one to hang around, he appeared, ate and left. As time passed, he became bolder and braver and would arrive at twilight to eat the food that by now, I was leaving on the outside table for him. The minute he saw us watching him he left, helped along by Alfie who decided that he did not like him at all.