Patience is a virtue...

... and I am once again losing patience with that orange cat. Stupid cat... I've been feeding him for over a year now, and do you think he appreciates all the bowls of Meow Mix? Not a chance, by the way he's been acting.

When I put the food dish on the porch yesterday, he grabbed hold of my arm and started hissing at me, baring his teeth and acting like a furry orange and white fool. Luckily, his claws got hooked into my sweater, not my arm... and when I screamed "NO!" at him, he backed away... and one of his paws turned over the bowl of cat food so I had Meow Mix sprinkled all over the porch by the back door.

Give me a blessed break with this cat. My husband said maybe I should just stop feeding him. Easy for him to say. I tried that more than a few times last year when that cat started to hang around the porch. The hungrier he got, the louder he meowed... and it was ultimately my husband who had said "Okay, okay... feed that cat..."  Plus, when that orange cat is hungry, he gets more aggressive with our two outside cats.

Since yesterday, I've been using an umbrella to keep that cat away from my arms and my legs. Today wasn't a problem with the umbrella because it's been raining all day, but I have to wonder what the neighbors would think if they should happen to see me walking with an umbrella on all the sunny days. The orange cat tends to rub up against the umbrella instead of my legs... and then without warning, he grabs that umbrella and hangs on with his claws for dear life... better the umbrella than my legs, I can tell you that.

For the past month or so, I've kept a little cube-shaped cat bed out on the chaise lounge for that cat, so he would have a warm place to sleep. I hated that he was sleeping under the guest cottage on the coldest of nights... and it took a couple of weeks for him to 'trust' that cat bed. Now he gets inside of that bed all the time and curls up tight, and he's safe from the wind and the cold.  When we had some close-to-freezing nights, I took a blanket and wrapped it around the cat bed, to give that orange cat more coverage, and that didn't seem to bother him.

So now... I'm wondering if I can fit that cube-shaped cat bed into one of the cat carriers... and then I can wrap the cat carrier with the same blanket that's now wrapped around the cat bed, to disguise the carrier.  I'm hoping that the orange cat will just go into that cube-shaped bed, which would be inside the carrier, and then I can go out there and shut the damn door of that carrier and drive off to the shelter with that orange cat and say "Here! He's all yours! Keep the cube-bed for him and just give me back the carrier."

Hope floats.