Zookeeping

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So I've been rather torn over whether to make the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee strictly indoor cats or if they get to be indoor-outdoor. All our cats so far have been the latter variety, but this was before we knew just how ecologically destructive they are.

I'm still thinking it may be only supervised Outside Time, but just in case, I figured I'd start training them early on wearing jingle collars so that it will be much more difficult to sneak up on animals.*

Which means that they get to try out collars!

... I think I may have broken their nervous systems.

Seriously, they spent the first hour or so flipping around like ground flowers. And then they mostly forgot about them. Starbuck has worked out how to snap the breakaway, and I just keep putting it back on her when she does. I'm hoping she gets used to it enough that she doesn't bother trying to take it off.

They're also still only meeting Fern every so often. Aspen has pointed out that with that and the parrot that the kittens are so interested in, my life has become a variation of the Fox-Grain-Goose riddle. It's at least keeping me busy.


*I don't think they've learned to kill things, but you never know.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Our cats are indoor-outdoor, which I feel mildly guilty about. There's a pet door to the big fenced back yard, which is a godsend for the dog, but of course there's no way to give the dog unfettered yard access without giving it to cats, too. And worse yet, the two cats who love the back yard are impossible to keep collars on; Peejee lost about five before I stopped buying them, and Zabina went through three before the same. So I'm not even warning the local wildlife of their murderous presence.

On the other hand, the squirrels and grackles can all take care of themselves, so with rare exceptions, they don't seem to do in much of anything except for bugs and mice, none of which are particularly endangered around here. So the guilt remains mild, and the cat boxes remain much more manageable. I at least feel good about Foster's inside-outside habits: he goes outside to stare at the grass and then poop, he comes back inside, that is about the whole of it. He's seventeen and laid-back. He's not gonna murder anything; he won't even eat kibble anymore, just wet food.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hah! We've got scrubjays, starlings, and magpies in the Take Care of Themselves category. There are some jays with a nest near the house, and I can tell where Fern is when she's out by what part of the house the mob-squawking is coming from. (And she always looks so wounded about it. "Look at this unruly mob! All I wanted to do was kill and eat their babies! What's their DEAL?")

The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee got mobbed by the scrub jays while they were out on the deck a few days ago. I felt like we had hit some kind of Baby's First milestone.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

My very orange kitteh got dive-bombed by a couple of fieldfares the very first time he went outside. They didn't bother our old tabby, but the ginger was obviously just Too Colourful.