Mooch, Et. Al.

Signs of the current North Idaho electorate:

Boundary County results for Idaho State Senator race in Tuesday's general election. 

Scott Herndon:  3,239

Steve Johnson: 1,616

Bonner County results for Idaho State Senator race:

Scott Herndon: 9,825

Steve Johnson:  7,409

Draw your own conclusions. 

Mooch has come to stay.  

So far, "they" haven't revealed "their" gender. 

I fervently hope that the "big reveal" does not involve a batch of kittens.

Last time a mother cat moved in and gave birth to a trio of three kittens, she was feral, and thus, so were her kittens.  

First, she and her family stayed at the far shed.  Then, she came up our way and brought her kittens to live in the barn tack room. 

I was horrified, mainly cuz we now had four wild and crazy cats inhabiting the barn.  

Years ago, at the other farm on Great Northern Road, a similar situation involving robust feline multiplication eventually led to 19 feral cats emphatically and stinkily occupying our bunk house. 

Every time any of us walked through the bunk house door, the scene instantly turned into frenetic motion with cats jumping and scurrying all over the place. 

As you can imagine, that wild herd did a real number on our bunk house, destroying many of our stored items, while relieving themselves.  

Imagine 19 cats and all the urine they can emit!

Then, imagine the smell. 

I donated $100 to the shelter for use of the cat trap and gradually caught most of them, turning them over to the shelter staff, hoping to never see them again.

Though there were only four, the feral cat/kittens from the story above gave me more distress than I ever could imagine. 

Since they were staying in the barn, I read up on shelter guidelines for what I could do to get the mother spayed and the kittens given away. 

The literature suggested that friendly feral kittens are much more likely to be adopted than nasty feral kittens. 

Nasty kittens are given back to the client.

So, not wanting that, I set about the task of taming them.  Well, that didn't go so well when one bit into my finger and broke the skin.

Having gone through two experiences of my mother's cat Rowdy biting her and giving her that cat-bite infection, sending her to the ER twice and to surgery once and her kids on several trips to have her get IV's every twelve hours, I went into instant anxiety mode, thinking of the prospects of getting a similar infection.

Immediately after being bitten, I ran to the house and thoroughly washed my feral kitty wound and then used antibiotics on it.  

The next morning I saw a Facebook picture of two hands and arms with a network of scratches going ever direction.

The hands and arms belonged to a former student who's a veterinarian.  

She had been dealing with apparently the biggest scaredy cat in the world, and it had fought back.

I wrote her a note telling her of my experience. In her response, she mentioned the word RABIES, noting that she had been vaccinated for rabies. 

Granted, there is not much rabies around this area, but you can imagine in my already fragile state of mind, what the sheer mention of the word did to me. 

My friend down the road, a doctor who had dealt with my mother's cat bites,  told me to get to urgent care and get all the stuff necessary to fend off any potential cat bite problems.  

So, I did, and, later, with her advice, I took kittens one by one (all identically black) to the vets to be tested for rabies.  

In the process of catching the kittens, I also caught the mama and hauled her off to be spayed. 

Well, she came home that afternoon and came back to life from her sedation, she quickly escaped the tack room never to be seen again. 

Long story short, no rabies, no cat bite disease for me but a whole lot of worry and dollars spent. 

And, so now we have another, as yet, non binary intruder which has made itself at home, taken over the tack room, Sunny's Meow Mix and the whole barn itself. 

One difference:  this cat seems to be domesticated because it meows to me every time I go to the barn and only leisurely trots away whenever I try to engage with it (wearing thick gloves, of course). 

I broke down and finally decided this week to give Mooch a name because that's exactly what they do.  This fluffy kitty licks Sunny's dish clean every day. 

But they seem to nice and wanting to be friendly. 

The first time I ever saw Mooch, Debbie and Willie were here visiting with their new little puppy Kenny.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark long-haired streak headed north along the fence line to the first pasture. 

I thought and hoped for a moment that I was seeing things.  

Certainly, I also thought, that's not another freeloader showing up to join Sunny and the mice at the food dish.

After all, it was back in the late summer when mice had completely taken over the tack room while Sunny watched them invade from her perch at the top of her cat condo. 

Meow Mix was disappearing almost faster than I could reload the cat dish, which was usually licked clean of food but peppered with mouse turds.

So, my first thought of seeing this strange cat heading toward the barn was that I was NOT going to keep buying Meow Mix for Sunny and anyone else who chose to show up uninvited for dinner in Sunny's room.

Since that first sighting, I've seen the cat in several more setting, even one during a night last week when I spotted them running out the door of our garage and then stopping briefly to meow at me. 

What a bold move, I thought, figuring that this cat has definitely become a feline squatter at the Lovestead. 

I can remember back in the old days when stray dogs would show up at our farm on Boyer, and we would be instructed to stay away and not show any positive attention to them in hopes they'd leave and find a more friendly family. 

More than once, though, my mother caught my dad out around the barn, talking to and petting the stray, which, by this time, knew it had truly found home.

Same thing happened at the old Harney barn when Harold would go to the Upper Place. In that setting, there were no instructions to ignore any stray cats that showed up. 

So, Harold did everything possible to tame them and usually succeeded.

My sisters have been known to do the same. 

In my case, the history of cat bites with my mother and myself kinda muddies my waters on immediately falling for a new freeloader. 

But, for some reason, Mooch hasn't done much to elicit disdain.  They have simply lived up to their namesake by eating Sunny's food and caused no concerns about lashing out and using their claws or teeth for defense. 

So, I'm giving Mooch a chance to become part of the menagerie around here. 

And, I'll be very careful when trying to do a gender check on them.  

I guess by next spring, if there are no batches of kittens snuggling together in the barn, "they" will receive a new designation as a "he." 

I'm also clinging to the hope that Mooch may just help keep the mouse population at the food dish to zero.

Happy Thursday.