Stray cats and bandaids.

I'm sitting here typing with a bandaid on my right hand.... that fleshy part of the hand, below the thumb.... no matter what you do with your hand, that part of it comes into play. Keeping a bandaid on there isn't easy.... and with Sweet Pea trying to get the bandaid off all the time, it becomes nearly impossible.

The stray cat was back last night..... definitely a boy-cat (not fixed, of course). He ate the food I left out there for him, then just sat next to the bowl. Is that it? I'm starving out here, you know. I've had enough cats along the years to understand what they're wanting...... so out I went with more food for him. Before he started eating again, he rubbed up against my legs, howling and meowing and ye-owling loud enough to wake up half the county. Rub, rub, rub, ye-owl, ye-owl, ye-ooowwwl. I told him how cute he was, told him we didn't need another cat, told him to just eat his dinner and find his hiding place again.

It was right about then that this cute little bundle of teenaged boy-cat clamped his teeth down on my hand. Needless to say, no one ever told him Never bite the hand that feeds you. Cat-person that I am, I knew enough not to pull my hand away, because then they bite down harder and try to capture you. In the three seconds that he had my hand inbetween those sharp lily-white teeth of his, he was able to make two neat little puncture marks... one in the fleshy part near my palm, the other on top, under my thumb.

His cat-fate was sealed at that moment. I said goodnight to him and left the food bowl out there. The next twenty minutes were spent washing out the cuts and covering them with Neosporin and bandaids. When I woke up this morning, Gatsby's outside pillow was on the deck again, turned upsidedown like the first night, and there wasn't a drop of food left in that dish out there. After I finished the morning chores here, I got out the Neosporin and bandaids again.

The shelter isn't open on the weekends, but we will be bringing that cat to them during the week, whenever we can catch him and get him into a carrying crate. After another night or two of feeding him on the deck, I will be able to put his dish of food into a crate and hopefully, he'll go in there to eat and I can just close the little door. Just in case, I think I will wear those two long oven-mitts that I use for picking up the chickens.

I can't really fault that cat for biting..... he's terribly scared, and very young..... and heaven only knows what he faces every night out there on the property. Then again, neither Gatsby nor Sweet Pea tried to bite, and they were both strays. A couple of weeks ago, when Gatsby was staying outside overnight, he turned up on the porch in the morning with a cut over his left eye, and two cuts under his chin. Gatsby, our normally street-wise, country-wise cat, came into the house that morning and didn't want to go out for the rest of the day. He's been out in daylight since, but he doesn't move far from the porch, and I haven't had the heart to make him sleep outside since that night.

I am a total mush when it comes to these cats. I seem to remember telling my husband that Gatsby and Sweet Pea would be "barn cats," "outside cats." Let's see now.... how long did that last? When the normally cool weather turned frigid last winter, in came Gatsby. When the vet told me that Sweet Pea had a heart murmur, in he came. Even Mickey, my once inside-cat who would prefer to be outside all the time.... I am constantly looking for him and making sure he's okay and not going too far away from the house and the porch when he gets into one of his Marco Polo moods.

It will be easy to bring this latest stray cat to the shelter. Not only do we truly not need (or want) another cat, but I certainly don't want a cat who will bite when he gets scared. A cat's personality is formed at a very early stage in their little whiskered lives... and what they are at 8 weeks is what they stay till their 8th or 18th year. I have enough to do without trying to rehabilitate a stray cat who thinks making puncture marks on the hand holding the cat food is a smart way to establish ownership.

As I type, I can feel the two bandaids on my right hand. The puncture mark on the inside of my palm will throb when I try and grab or lift something. I'm going to keep re-applying the Neosporin and bandaids..... at least until we have brought this cat to the shelter. I guess we won't be telling the shelter people that we thought of naming him "Jaws," and I will make sure the bandaids are off before we even walk in there.