Making hay...

As I type, the "hay guy" is mowing down the pastures... he's been doing that since early this morning. As a result of that, flocks of crows and vultures have been circling in the sky, looking for mice who have left the tall grass and are running around the fields looking for a safe haven. Between the hay guy on the tractor-thing, and those huge birds flying circles in the sky, I don't think there's any place that's exactly safe for the mice.

Add into that equation our three outside cats... Gatsby and Mickey and (still) that orange cat. Each of them had hiding spots around the house and under the bushes all day today, with one eye on the tractor's progress and the other eye on whatever is scampering along in the grass running in the opposite direction of the tractor. Mickey caught two lizards, the smaller of which (yuck) he ate. I don't think Gatsby has caught anything at all... he likes to look and watch, but doesn't often chase anything (unless it's holding a dish of Meow Mix).  My guess is that the orange cat did indeed catch (and eat) at least one mouse because he didn't come up on the porch at lunch-time today.

The orange cat, however, could be just staying away from Gatsby as much as possible today. Early this morning, before the sun came up, Gatsby decided he didn't want to share the porch with the orange cat. I was barely awake when I heard Gatsby howling and screeching at the orange cat, and then I heard both of them running across the porch. Actually, I just heard Gatsby's heavy-set self running on the porch..... he's so big that he sounds like a small dog out there (or a very tiny baby hippo).

The neighbor's dogs heard Gatsby howling as well, and they started barking before six o'clock this morning, which set off the other neighbor's roosters and they started crowing.  With just one twitch of Gatsby's whiskers as he looked at the orange cat in the dark of the morning and decided to prove who owns the porch, all the neighbors on our side of these hills were probably waking up at 5:30 this morning saying "What the....?!"