care and feeding
a while ago an internet friend posted that they got a bird feeder to add some enrichment to their cat’s enclosure, to help with food anxiety
i thought that might help ravioli, since he’s often stressed around mealtime. so i got a window-mounted feeder, got some birdseed, and loaded it up. they did not take to the feeder at all. i ended up taking it down.
before i did, though, i started putting seed just on the windowsill. the birds really like that. the mourning doves bully all the littler birds away and knock a bunch of seed to the ground floor in the process, where the LBBs and such congregate.
when i moved here in 2018 there weren’t really any stray cats in the neighborhood. i’ve been seeing more lately—there’s an old lawyer guy around the corner who always is feeding them and built them little heated structures and stuff. he has three cats inside that will watch the outside cats very calmly through the glass door.
giving neighborhood cats names is very important, obviously, though fraught. in the summer of 2023 there was a black cat and her kitten who hung out in our yard a lot. my partner named the mother frank (short for frankincense) and the kitten blot. there’s a young black cat who i see around our yard lately who i think is blot a little more grown up. likes to hang out at the edge of the trees.
sometimes i see an orange tabby around too, big swirls and stripes that go to white toward the end of his tail.
there’s a family that lives in the basement unit of the house i live in that got converted into a bunch of apartments. they have a young kid who usually will try to join me in unsuccessfully making friends with the cats in our yard before his dad ushers him in. today i asked him what we should name the orange cat who had settled as a respectful distance.
he hesitated. i told him it was a big decision but he insisted no, he’ll think of a name right now.
he named that orange cat: World Destroyer
