One more stray cat......

To add to the stray cat tally around here...... not only do we have the orange/white stray that never eats but lets us know he's on the porch by meowing for all he's worth...... but now we also have an all-black stray that looks enough like our own Mickey Kitty to be his twin brother.  And this Mickey-look-alike is one starving cat, as shown by the amount of Meow Mix he can eat in one sitting.

I had food out on the porch this morning because Mickey and Gatsby were outside. At one point this morning as I was walking up the front staircase, I saw Mickey out in the sun on the front porch and not three feet away from him was a mirror-image black cat.  Mickey watched the other cat walking on the porch, then as soon as I went out there to see who the stranger was, Mickey started to hiss and screech a little bit, in defense of either me or his porch.

I quickly put Mickey into the garage, brought Gatsby into the house, and left the food out on the porch for the black stray.  Within ten minutes, the stray was curled up by the food dish and eating every bit of Meow Mix in the bowl.  Quite unlike the orange/white stray who never eats either the Meow Mix or the Fancy Feast that I've offered him.   The orange/white doesn't appear to be starving.......... this black one is clearly thin, clearly hungry, and clearly a mirror image of Mickey.

My husband had gone into the barn this morning to turn off the electric blanket that we keep around the handle of the water pump-thing when the temperatures get down near freezing, as they did last night. (All it takes in one good solid freeze, which happened two years ago, so now we're very careful about heaters and dripping faucets and every other precaution we can take when the temperatures get un-Texas-like in December and January.)   As my husband got near to the pump-thing in the barn this morning, he said a cat darted out from near the blanket.  Now we're guessing that the stray (one or both of them) have discovered that it's warm under that blanket on these cold nights.  Heaven only knows how many stray cats have made homes for themselves in that barn since we've been here.  We've taken countless strays to the shelter in town since we've been on this property, but these latest two may be too smart to find themselves caught in a catch/release trap.

We'll see what happens...... I'll just have to be careful with Mickey.... that cat is fearless, and he doesn't have a clue how to really be an outside cat.  He's all hiss and no fight, that one.  Sweet Pea is the luckiest cat... he's inside, doesn't try to get out, knows that it's safer and cozier in the house, and (so far) he's been a very good inside cat since we found him two years ago.

Cats... cats... deliver me from stray cats.