photo © bob arnold

Good Morning Tom & Angelica

You should have been with us this morning in the kitchen as we brought in the one surviving feral kitten from the batch of squatters yesterday. Lo and behold she was caught inside the stone hut for the last four days! finding a perch in one sunshine window and looking out. We had been hearing meowing and went to look, search this sound out. Nothing. Finally the kitten showed itself in the window and she was scrawny and we brought her inside. Last night fed her, inched closer, a little milk with wet meat with tender talk. Furry Lewis was playing at suppertime as the first cut of the evening so Furry became its name for the moment. She made it through the night. Fed again this morning. Now louder meows and coming a little closer and closer and louder meows. As I was preparing more food Sweetheart jumped and exclaimed from the kitchen window by the fridge "Come and look". Three feet from the window, regale, eyes like no other was mother cat. She's never come this close, certainly not in a pose, beautiful example of standing one's ground. Through the house walls she had heard the meows and she came a-callin'. I'll never forget the look. I once tracked a bobcat to its den with Carson on my back in a knapsack and a foot of fresh snow on snowshoes and while I was looking and looking through the brush and knowing the small rock caves were ahead of me, on my back, at my right ear, Carson said with a smile to his word "Kitty". Say what? Dead ahead and no more than 6 feet away, was the bobcat looking out. It could have had me as prey since I was in adoring standstill.

Now with winter creeping close we have to decide to give the kitten out to the mother (and she may die anyway), or keep her and feed her and restore her life.

An answer is in the wings

Bob Arnold says every minute gets closer