Life without Satchmo: This is about cats...not Satchmo

Friday, February 5, 2010

This is about cats...not Satchmo

I know this blog is about my dog, Satchmo, but I just have to talk a minute about cats. I live in an apartment complex in Austin, TX. As you may know, apartments are a veritable source of feral cats from people moving away and leaving pet cats, the industrial dumpsters filled with trash attract strays, etc. So, there used to be a black female cat that "sort of" lived down the row from my house--(I say sort of because the elderly lady living there did not own the cat, she just felt sorry for her and fed her fairly often). Anyway, this cat has had several litters of kittens in the two years I have been here. The problem is that they are feral and yet they live up close to people. What usually happens is the kittens either get run over in the parking lot, get eaten by wild animals (I've seen foxes, skunks, and snakes), or they go all wild and run off.

Anyway, before this lady moved, there was a litter of 4 little black kittens living inside her car (which was never used because she was house-bound). One was run over, another was killed because he was up inside a motor well when the owner started the car--but two remained. My Satchmo has always loved cats and so he wants to go check on the kittens whenever we go outside, so I guess I was sort of familiar to these little babies. So, when she moved, I began feeding them on my porch.

It did not take even a day for them to find my food and start sleeping on the chairs outside. So, recently, they have become quite curious about where Satchmo and I go when we go inside. I frequently find them sitting just outside the door when I open it. So, last night I put the dogs up in my bedroom and left the front door open for a long time. These two little black fuzz balls cautiously came up to the door and then-----they came inside. They were very frightened and bolted if you moved, but they stayed in the front area sniffing and looking for quite some time.

My goal with these two is to be able to capture them and take them to be sterilized and get shots before returning them to their current life as outside cats (unless they want to come inside again). We'll see. I don't know if this is possible, but I will keep trying.