Aww, cute little feral kitten

The little gatita you see above is one of three feral cats that are gracing our doorstep, we've had others but we try to shoo them away. Frankly if you get a reputation amongst the cats as being a place to have a feed you'll never get any work done, and the neighbors will begin to hate you.

Feral cats are different from their domesticated cousins, they mioaw at the top of their lungs when they get here, and they don't shutup until we feed them, and then they go back to mioawing at the top of their lungs again. We weren't able to figure this out until someone said its because they're feral and don't have a lot of personal contact with humans, so they haven't developed those other communication skills like domesticated cats have.

Regular domesticated cats will lift their tails and rub their heads and shoulders on your legs, they'll walk between your legs doing the same thing, they purr, they look at you using different facial expressions, they hop onto your lap and gently dig their claws in repeatedly, these sorts of things. Feral cats don't know how to do any of those things so they just miaow; LOUDLY!

So, you've got a bunch of cats turning up your door wanting to be fed, you don't have any food bowls for them, and you certainly aren't going to use regular cereal bowls. Why it's obvious, use the lid from an old instant coffee jar! Then take snapshots of cats headbutting each other while they try to get the milk.

Then, since the only food we have in the house that is quick and easy to give them is ham, yup, our feral cats had a great first meal with us, all because the other half, bless her, felt sorry for the little gatitos.

Needless to say ham is too expensive for feral cats who don't show their love in normal domesticated ways so a big bag of cat biscuits (crunchies we call them) had to be bought along with a tin or two of fish flavored soft food.

And you guessed it, the next day they were back by which time the tins were used up, so being the clever little cook that she is, my other half spent a couple of hours cooking up rice and vegetables and making gravies, all sorts of things, which have all gone into the freezer to make it easy to feed the feral cats that don't belong to us. [Carl shakes head, where did I find her?]

Then me being smart, and thinking this would get rid of the cat problem said something along the lines of "Those flea infested worm pooping dirty feral cats can't eat their food in our courtyard, you'll have to feed them over there [points to somewhere distant]"

She responded with the perfectly logical, "I know, we'll get some worm tablets and those de-fleaing ampoules"

We discussed this for a couple of days, I don't think either of us liked the other very much after each discussion, and the upshot is that Saturday we went into town and bought a little food bowl, several worming tablets, and three ampoules for de-fleaing medicine. Total cost, 27Euros, and the cats still aren't ours.

Yours truly now sports several scratches on my arms and hands, and even one under my chin, obtained whilst holding these delightful little gatitos so the ampoule could be emptied at the back of their cute little heads. Grrr.