Another Cat!!!

If this keeps up, I'm going to be starting to be referred to as The Crazy Cat Lady (as opposed to The Crazy Chicken Lady or The Crazy Rabbit Lady...but I guess anything's better than just plain old The Crazy Lady. Sometimes you just gotta look for the bright side.) Last winter I noticed a very large, fluffy black and white making its way across the snow cover towards the chicken coop. She moved slowly and gingerly as if she thought she might fall. It hurt to watch her. I got the impression she was old and probably arthritic. I opened the door and she ran(ish) under our porch.

I saw her on and off through the winter. It appears she has taken up residence under the veranda, on the farthest corner. Probably an old feral cat too tired to try to make it through the winter without some sort of shelter. My heart went out to her. (I'm calling her 'her' but I have no idea if she's a 'her' or a 'him' , but I know she's not an 'it').

I started leaving food out for her. I know, I know, I know, you feed 'em, you'll never get rid of 'em. But I didn't want her starving to death under my porch. Besides, it was obvious she was heading to the coop to eat Coop's leftovers anyways. At first, she ran and hid from me. Then she didn't run as far and did stay in sight waiting for me to put down food and leave. She started at about 30 feet away and over the months, she has gotten as close as six feet. She moves cautiously (painfully?), and sits daintily with her tail curled around her front feet.

She has learned, I imagine, to be patient, to be invisible, to be cautious of humans.

She gets along with Coop but not Whisk but then again, Whisk hates EVERY cat in the world. I'm hoping one day I will gain enough of her trust that I will be able to take her to the vets so she can at least be spayed or neutered, which ever the case may be. We call her Toc which stands for The Old Cat and as long as people don't start calling me TCL (The Crazy Lady) I figure I'm ahead of the game.

It's Not Goodbye If You Don't Forget

I lost my biggest fan of this blog. Mom passed at the age of 86 after a monumental battle with cancer. She passed as she had lived; quietly with a grace and love I have never seen matched.

Mom loved my blog and if I hadn't posted for a while I'd get an email from her. Typically, she never told me to post something it was always how much she enjoyed it and were there any new posts on the way? Pushy, she wasn't. Supportive and positive was the way she liked doing things. When I told her I was taking a break from it, she just said could read the old posts over and over. She had three favorites: http://wwwmindwanderings.blogspot.ca/2010/09/pumpkins-on-gate.html
http://wwwmindwanderings.blogspot.ca/2008/07/my-moms-peonies.html

http://wwwmindwanderings.blogspot.ca/2009/01/to-special-lady.html

I must admit, the last one is my favorite, too.

I decided to stop posting for a year or so because I found myself repeating the same thing: Today I grew something, today I harvested something, today I butchered something... Same old, same old. Over a year has gone by so it's time to start again. At least it will be a record of my triumphs, failures and everything in between.I'm going to start again once things settle a little bit around here. But it won't be quite the same because Mom was my biggest fan and not only of the blog.