Backyard Cat Intermission

Good Morning Friends. Some days, you just are not feeling it at all and struggle to find the initiative to move forward. Today is one of those days. I don’t have any clear focus from the gaming front to drive my writing, so I am sitting here floundering a bit. I am sure I could fill up my pages with more nonsense pulled directly from my misadventures in Path of Exile, but I hate doing that if there isn’t anything I am trying to say. Instead, you are going to get a post of me talking about cats. We will start this off with a picture of Josie in her new favorite spot. We’ve bought so many of these self-heating pads at this point. There is one upstairs in the loft, another beside me here at my computer, one on the downstairs couch, and the first one that lives on the bed. Most recently we picked up two and put them in the greenhouse window in our kitchen… please excuse the mineral-streaked windows because we have not been out to clean them this season. She loves this spot more than any other because it is probably the warmest and also allows her to keep tabs on the backyard ferals.

Speaking of Backyard Ferals, most recently now that the weather has become warmer my wife spends most of her evenings reading on the patio just off our bedroom. Lately, it seems that the grey tabby cat that we call “Greybie” has taken to hanging out back there with her. Normally speaking he is a front porch cat, but is seemingly exploring our backyard as well. I would be perfectly fine if he took up residence there more permanently because I would worry about him far less if he had a known safe place to be. I am wondering if eventually, he will start curling up on my wife while she reads, because he is the most friendly of our feral population. When I feed in the morning and evening he seems way more interested in getting love than he does the food. He is not so tame that a wrong movement at any time won’t send him running away, however.

Tripod the usual resident of our backyard is becoming more used to having human beings active while she is. She had disappeared for about a month and when she came back she has been way more friendly than usual. That is not to say either of us can actually touch her, but she is way more willing to eat while I am standing nearby than she used to be. More recently with my wife spending as much time in the backyard as she has, Tripod is getting more used to humans while she is active. She has always tolerated me, but for whatever reason when my wife came outside she went hiding. Now I guess she is getting used to a quietly reading human presence and has started lounging about. This was taken from the first day I noticed she didn’t flee, she had taken up a location on the lawn on the far side of the patio off our kitchen.

The next day my wife sent me this rather blurry photo of a phenomenon I had witnessed of her spread out and snoozing on the glass-top television on the kitchen patio. So it seems like she is starting to get way more willing to let her guard down when either of us is out there. She still talks up a storm while I feed her, but shows no real sign of letting me get close enough to pet her. I mean she has been our backyard cat for going on five years at this point, so the progress that has been made has been excruciatingly slow. I am not sure what happened while she was gone from our yard for a little over a month, but it seemed to have given her a new appreciation of the relatively safe place she has to call home. I am not holding my breath that we will ever be able to touch her or even pick her up… but one can hope I guess.

There is zero doubt that Tripod owns our backyard. I honestly feel bad that at some point soon we will be opening the pool and depriving her of one of her favorite spots. There is a place where our pool cover sags a bit giving her a little hammock on the edge that she spends a good deal of time lounging in. We’ve contemplated getting some work done on our back deck to replace a good chunk of it, but I admit I am a bit worried that it might drive her off permanently. She has found her way back to our yard a few times after disappearing for a bit, so part of me hopes that she would do the same again after the construction was finished.

So I guess this is how you make a blog post when you are not feeling like writing a blog post. I am sure tomorrow I will be back with my normal gaming nonsense.