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Charlotte’s best friend

That’s a poorly cast cement kitty sculpture we call Mr Grumpy Puss. It’s such a crude representation, I was astonished when my old cat Charlotte reacted to his appearance in the garden as if he were a real cat.

Charlotte hated other cats and was deeply suspicious of this one at first. After a few days, though, she would sometimes see her sitting on the lawn with him, keeping him company. From a safe distance, of course.

Interesting things go on in the little brains of cats.

Chickens, not so much. The flock have never reacted to him at all, other than to perch on his head and shit down his back from time to time.

That chicken is Violence. She was originally called Violet until we learned her true nature. All the lavender pekins I’ve had were jerks.

Comments


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: December 28, 2021, 8:26 pm

Oh, yes!

I remember you relating to us that you and Uncle B. would chide Violet with “Violence is never the answer.”


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: December 28, 2021, 8:35 pm

We feed the birds year round. We get a nice variety of song birds; cardinals, blue jays, orioles, finches et al, and the occasional mourning dove. It’s nice.

However, living in the suburbs as we do, this leads to periodic invasions of gangs of pigeons. I do not care for pigeons; perhaps unfairly but there it is. In an effort to chase them away, after various failures (they learned the exact range of our garden hose), I found an excellent way to scare them: a lovely and exacting rubber copy of a copperhead snake. It worked!

I moved the “snake” around just a little every morning and things were going swimmingly (well, except for scaring the panties off one of my wife’s poor friends on day – although some people thought that a feature not a bug), until:

I learned how stupid mourning doves are, and consequently how smart pigeons are. They would sit on our neighbor’s roof and look down longingly but as long as the snake was there; ain’t nobody dumb enough to go down there! But actually there was: a mourning dove landed on the garden walk right next to that rubber snake. Oddly enough the snake didn’t eat him; in fact nothing happened. The pigeons saw that and one brave scout flew down, and then they all did.

The rubber snake never worked again…..


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: December 28, 2021, 10:32 pm

“All the lavender pekins I’ve had were jerks.”

Jerk chicken. Hmmm.


Comment from BJM
Time: December 29, 2021, 4:23 am

@Some Veg…I put a fake snake in a peach tree…worked like a charm it did…until a red-shouldered hawk swooped down, snatched up fake snake and flew away.


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: December 29, 2021, 12:45 pm

The good old boys club went hunting dove 30± years ago and I discovered several things about Texas mourning doves in the process.

They mate for (probably short) life.
They are amazingly dumb.
They don’t yield much meat.
They’re just not that tasty.
They’re expensive to hunt, given the yield, the daily bag limit, cost of the shotgun and shells, and the cost of the license.

Only thing I’ve ever hunted and haven’t hunted since. The mating for life thing was a huge factor.

They are also the most frequent bits and pieces left at the foot of our oak trees as the local cats and bobcats poach them while they’re sleeping.

@Someveg – are you seeing bobcats over your way? I’ve seen three females each with 2 or 3 cubs in the last 3 weeks alone. Given that our dogs would be the main course after a bird appetizer we tend to keep a wary watch.

Oh -did no one pick rotten Dirty Harry Rotten Reid in the deadpool?


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: December 29, 2021, 1:02 pm

@durnedyankee — Yes, Dirty Harry was picked by Spad13 but Tutu croaked first.


Comment from D
Time: December 29, 2021, 1:38 pm

Ah, right we don’t have another pool yet. I forget the cycle is Friday to Friday and not modern day spontaneous.

Since it takes three freaking months for the Social Security Administration to register a direct deposit account change I can hardly fault Sweasy for only running the deadpool on a week to week basis.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: December 29, 2021, 7:11 pm

DurnYankee –

We do indeed have bobcats here. We live on a canal in Valley Ranch and the canal system acts as a nice thoroughfare for them giving them miles of range without having to cross a road. We have lots of pictures of them on our patio, and there were reports of kitts on the canal last fall. Over the past few years the number of bunnies hopping around has fallen off drastically, and well, the squirrels are holding there own but either a lot of them grow up and move away or end up on somebody’s menu… Our personal losses have only been a couple of expensive Koi but that may have been a raccoon to be fair.

As for Harry Reid, well, here’s hoping his last kiss was for Nancy Pelosi…


Comment from Spad13
Time: December 30, 2021, 12:01 am

I was almost famous.


Comment from Formerly known as Skeptic
Time: December 31, 2021, 4:42 am

“Interesting things go on in the little brains of cats.”

Brain the size of a walnut. I remind my daughter of this whenever her cat does something particularly, um, not so bright.

Cats only appear smart sometimes because of some finely honed instincts, but they can be quite dense.

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