Gatsby 1 - Stray Cat 0

We haven't seen the stray cat since the night that he and Gatsby had their fight on the front porch.  Gatsby has done this before... tolerated a stray cat for a for days or even weeks, and then all of a sudden he fights with them and they disappear.  The last two strays that Gatsby chased away were orange and white males... so I thought he just didn't like orange/white cats.  Which I guess is ridiculous now that I see that in print.  Gatsby's patience ran out with those other two cats and after they discussed their territorial issues, we never saw the orange and white cats again.

This latest stray cat looks like our Sweet Pea... striped along the back and cheetah-spotted on the belly.  Sweet Pea's colors are very symmetrical and perfectly coordinated... the stray's colors are more mottled.... but they are both very long and very tall cats, and if you saw them together you would think they had come from the same litter.  Which makes me wonder if someone around us in our community here has been letting their cats continue to breed, because we've seen other stray cats with Sweet Pea's markings and colors.  Coincidence or not?                                                                                                       

And Sweet Pea was a stray himself.... we found him peeking out of our barn on the record-breaking coldest day of January in 2010.  Poor cat was shivering, starving, and he was just so blessedly sweet.... I picked him up to keep him warm while we got food for him and he buried his face in my neck..... and that was that..... we had another cat.  The fact that Sweet Pea looked exactly like a cat my husband had as a child also helped seal his fate with our little family here.  Plus, we thought Sweet Pea was a female, just because of the way he acted... and the look-alike cat that my husband had as a boy was named "Girl" because his mother thought it was a female also.  Girl's name wasn't changed when they found out differently, and we didn't change Sweet Pea's name either when the vet told us we had a boy-cat.  (And Sweet Pea is still girl-ish at times, not that there's anything wrong with that.)

With any luck..... we won't see the stray cat again. I'm hoping that Gatsby did indeed get his point across ("No more cats in this house!").   I hate bringing strays to the shelter..... they keep them for a while, unless they think they're unadoptable...... and we have given the shelter $20 for every stray we've brought to them over the years...... the donation helps with the food and care....... and I hope it convinces them to keep 'our' strays from Death Row for a little while longer.

In a perfect world..... and I've said this a thousand times........ pet-owners would get all their pets spayed or neutered and wouldn't have litters of kittens and puppies and then not know what to do with them.  Please, people, please........ love and hug the pets that you have but don't let them bring babies into the world if you're not willing to take care of them.  And 'taking care of them' does not, does not, mean dropping them off on a quiet country road.