Strays R Us.

Christmas comes, and Christmas goes... and so do the stray animals in the hills here.

We had a couple of cold nights this weekend, and I felt so badly for the orange and white cat... he usually sleeps on a chair on our porch, on top of a soft blanket that I leave there for him. But when the wind blows, what good is being on top of a blanket, no matter how soft it is?

I decided to give the orange cat one of the cat beds..... one that I thought was so cute for the cats, but Sweet Pea didn't like it, Mickey wouldn't go near it, and Gatsby couldn't fit into it.  It's one of those square-shaped beds with a hole in the front... so the cat can go inside of it, curl up, and be toasty warm because it's lined with a soft lamb's wool fabric.  Out onto the porch chair it went, and for two nights, the orange cat slept in front of it but wouldn't go into it.  On the third night, it got windy... and finally, that orange/white cat decided that inside that cat bed was the place to be.  I woke up this morning and there he was, all curled up just as nice as could be. When I went out onto the porch to give him food, he was so comfy that he didn't even get out of that bed... he stuck his head out of it and meowed at me, then went back to sleep. (No, we really don't want another cat. I repeat... No, we really don't....)

Yesterday, one of the neighbor's dogs found her way to our driveway... for the hundredth time. This particular neighbor has two or three dogs at any given time. He takes good care of just one of them, his favorite dog which herds his goats and cows. The other dogs come and go, and when he doesn't want them anymore, he just stops feeding them, and the unwanted and hungry dogs go off to other properties.

So this one female dog, skinny as can be, with the body-type of a Greyhound and the face of a plain old hound, was sniffing around the driveway and the yard by the gazebo. When my husband noticed how skinny that dog was, he went out there with a bowl of Meow Mix. (We don't have a dog, so of course there's no dog food in the house.)  The dog gobbled up that cat food so quickly that my husband came in for a second bowl. The dog, however, got scared, and started walking off down the hill. Never the one to not feed a hungry animal, my husband got in the car and followed the dog, caught up with her, and gave her the second bowl of Meow Mix, along with a can of Fancy Feast that none of our cats would eat. That dog liked the Fancy Feast so much that it literally picked up the dish of canned food and walked off with it so it wouldn't be taken away from her.

After that dog had finished every last drop of cat food, my husband picked up both bowls and drove back up our hill. Within five minutes, the dog was in our driveway, sitting there on the concrete with one paw up as if she were begging for food. Out again went my husband, with still another bowl of Meow Mix. Lest you think we were over-feeding that dog, the bowls we were using were cat bowls, nowhere near the size of dish that big dog would require.

The stray dog ate very well yesterday, and being that it was raining today, we didn't see her in the driveway or the yard all day. I did, however, see dog paw-prints on our porch this afternoon, right next to the empty dish of cat food.... I had left food out there for the orange cat, but clearly the dog got to it first, and probably scared off the orange cat.

We tried to get this dog to follow us up to our porch yesterday, but the dog is so very scared, literally with her tail so far between her legs that she appears tail-less. This is not a dog we would keep... she's way too big, she doesn't seem to stay put and always wants to be traveling... definitely not our kind of dog. But we can't just leave a hungry dog out there without feeding her. So we'll keep trying... and hopefully we can get her to the local animal shelter. It's more than clear that the neighbor doesn't want her anymore. Some people should just never have pets of any kind.