If you feed them . . .

They will come! Kinda of like "If you build it, they will come." from that old baseball movie. Around the farm we somewhat intentionally provide feed for our local wild critters with our trees, bushes, and bird feeding station. Of course when I want to take a photo of the lively group of critters using the bird feeder, and surrounding plants they magically vanish as if they actually noticed that the curtain was pulled back from the window. So instead I got a photo of these two lovelys in our spruce tree (look hard at the middle of the photo, 2 dark spots at end of branches near fence):

But birds are not the only thing that has showed up, and really we should have known that given enough time this would happen. If you remember from past postings, a lovely tiger tom cat adopted us in September, and we have been feeding him, and letting him eat all of our rodents. Now that it is winter, it is his habit to meet me at the front door in the morning as I go to do chores, and remind me that he needs fed.


Well this morning, he met Ryan as he was leaving for work. So Ryan bent down to pet him, which quieted his meowing. The only thing is something was still meowing. So in comes Ryan for a flashlight, and follows the plaintive little voice. He ends up finding a little black and white runt of a half grown kitten on the kitchen porch. Which he brings around to show me, its cute little face looking all disgruntled and in need of love. Ryan loosens his grip, and the little one jumps down. I'm hoping he doesn't run and get up in the warm truck engine, eek!

Later I go out to do chores, and there isn't just one cat waiting for me to bring food out to it in the hay barn. So I bring an extra bowl, because I am the biggest softie there is. Trying not to think about how outdoor, feral cats are the bane of song birds everywhere, even those at my bird feeder.

Always the constant internal conflict between animal lover, conservationist, and farmer.