Deliver me from stray cats.....

I know I've said that before.... but we keep finding stray cats. Or rather, they keep finding us.  I guess when you have cats, any and all stray cats will gravitate to your property, your porch, your house... looking to make friends with your own cats, and possibly share food and sleeping arrangements.

We've been seeing a stray cat hanging around from time to time all summer long.... I don't even know if it's a male or a female..... it never does get very close, and only this week has it stayed on the porch when I'm out there. Usually, he/she was just running off very quickly as soon as he saw me. 

Last night, our outside cat Gatsby decided he'd had enough with the stray cat, and at three o'clock in the morning, my husband and I both woke up when we heard the cats fighting on our porch. My husband went to the back door, I went to the front..... and there were the two cats, eyes locked, noses nearly touching, and howling at each other, with spatters of blood on the porch.

When I opened up the door, thinking Gatsby would run inside like he usually does, both cats took off running around the porch and I heard them running down the steps. Both my husband and I were calling for Gatsby, but he wasn't listening.  He was just determined to chase that stray cat away once and for all.  We went back to bed......... Gatsby stayed outside.

This morning, there was Gatsby, with his nose to the screen door of the kitchen.  A little scratch on the top of his head, but that was about it.  He ate his breakfast and then went to sleep in his chair on the back porch and that's about all he did today-- sleep.  Which isn't all that unusual for The Gray Gatsby anyway.

Tonight after dinner, Gatsby was still on the back porch.... and so was the stray.  Gatsby was calmly and quietly watching the stray cat eat the dry food from the cat dish.  The stray looked at Gatsby, and Gatsby looked at the stray. No howling, no fuss, no locked eyes and no noses touching.  Best of friends now after last night's tussle?  I have no idea.  But I don't intend to be hearing a cat fight at three o'clock in the morning again.  I've already brought Gatsby into the house for the night, and I'm hoping he'll want to stay inside tonight.

We'll have to make friends with that stray cat.... and then I'll have to get him into a cat-carrier, and bring him to the shelter.  Which we've done with other stray cats from time to time.  We can't keep them all.  Gatsby was the first stray that we found outside, the summer after we moved here.  Then two years later, another stray found his way into our barn, and he was so pretty and so sweet... we named him Sweet Pea and he's more puppy-like than cat-like. Follows us all over... always wants to be in my lap, and will sit still for as long as my husband wants to scratch him under his chin. Very sweet and loving cat..... but when we kept Sweet Pea, we promised he was definitely the last stray cat that would be a 'keeper.'  We've kept our word.

Stray cats, however, have not stayed away...... we've had a few that we've taken to the shelter..... others that Gatsby has fought with and they ran away and kept on running and we've never seen them again.  We've also brought four stray dogs to the shelter....... we think that people abandoned them on our country road, hoping that someone else would adopt them, or probably not even caring if someone adopted them at all.  The people at the shelter know us... and we keep telling them the same thing: We just can't keep them all.

In a perfect world, everyone would spay or neuter their pets.... and they wouldn't take in dogs and cats if they had no intention of keeping them.... and they wouldn't just abandon their pets on country roads in the hills.  Is that too blessed much to ask?