That orange cat...

Orange Kitty is still around the property... sleeping under the bushes in the heat of the day, hiding under the gazebo when the lawn mower is going, standing guard by the back steps at night.  And still, he's being too aggressive to either pet him or catch him.... and catch him is what I'd like to do, followed by a trip to the local animal shelter. Surely, someone else in this town needs an orange and white cat to catch mice and keep snakes from coming up on the porch.

Our mostly-outside cat Gatsby doesn't howl at the orange cat all that much anymore... except, of course, if Orange Kitty is eating the Meow Mix at the very minute that Gatsby wants a snack. Then Gatsby's howls will have that orange cat running for cover underneath the cottage.

There are days when that orange cat looks at the bowl of Meow Mix and won't go near it. How can a stray cat be picky about the food that's put in front of him?  'Free' food that he doesn't have to hunt down!  I've tried cans of Fancy Feast with that orange cat... flavors that our other cats don't like and won't eat (but there's no way of knowing that until the cans are bought and paid for and opened up, of course). To date, that orange cat doesn't like any of the Fancy Feast cans, and tonight he has decided that he doesn't like Meow Mix either.

Well, so be it. I don't leave food out on the porch at night.... after Orange Kitty turned his whiskers up at the bowl of Meow Mix not once but twice, I brought the bowl into the house when he walked away from it. Off he went, down the steps of the porch, heading towards the field by the barn would be my guess.

Unless that orange cat gets his paws on a mouse tonight, he's going to be hungry. And then maybe in the morning he will decide that the Meow Mix isn't such a bad thing after all.  Stupid cat.

We've tried  not feeding that cat, in an attempt to get him to go away, but that just doesn't work, not in the beginning of his 'stay' here, and it doesn't work now. That orange cat just got thinner and thinner when we weren't feeding him, and he spent all of his time meowing on the back porch... too pitiful for words, and I just gave in and fed him.

Too aggressive to pet, too smart to be caught. And I've been saying from the beginning that we don't need another cat around here. Especially a stray cat who turns his nose up at a bowl of Meow Mix. Stupid cat.