Contributing writer
I feed the cats every morning, without fail. They sit and wait for me — once in a while, an eager one jumps up on the ledge of the screen door to signal his anticipation.
Marshmallow, our neutered male, lives on the back porch and watches my movement through the blinds.
“She’s moving toward the kitchen,” he tells his buddy, Callie-Cat, who’s a wild one and will not let me touch her. “She’s got the dry food in the dish!” The excitement is mounting.
Pop goes the lid on the can of wet food that is mixed in with some water to make a mouth-watering (for cats at least) slurry in the bowl. Marshmallow is now at the back door, fur quivering in anticipation. Here comes the cat food.
Sometimes, I have to do retraining at feeding time because my sister, in softhearted moments, lets her kittens — a privileged few — into her door to be fed.
“They get pushed away by the others,” she says. “They need to be able to eat in peace.”
Immediately, those same cats, coming to my house for a second helping, begin to believe that the “in-the-door privilege” extends across the street. I open the door with my morning offering of food for the front porch felines and those coddled kitties run in my door, under my feet, breaking my cat-feeding ritual (and my stride) to smithereens.
“Give um a swift kick,” Tim used to say when they did this. “Notice they don’t do that when I’m at the door.”
Right.
“Notice, I’m the one with the food bowl in my hand,” I would counter.
The number of cats that appear, on any given morning to be fed, varies. Some mornings I have two or three. The other day, I had 15! We’re like an inner-city soup kitchen some days, with cats appearing for a handout that I’ve never even seen before. Some of the cats are ours. Some of the cats are the neighbors. Some of the cats are professional moochers and I haven’t the foggiest idea to whom they belong. Some of the cats are a flat out nuisance, running my kitties (who have names) away from the food like some greedy person at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop, scooping up all the good stuff, yelling, “It’s MINE!” I try to send them packing.
One of my most aggravating visitors is a male cat, bent on establishing eminent domain. He’s here so much that I should give him a name. I refuse. He makes me furious. He’s smart and he knows that the first time I come out of the door with food in my hands that I don’t have the BB gun and the minute I turn my back he’s all over the food. He also knows that on the next exit, I’ll have the gun and he’s already running before I even get the gun aimed.
They’ve never connected — that cat and my BB gun — but the gun makes a point. “Whop!”
It’s a satisfying noise for me and a warning for the infringers. When the BB gun goes off, my cats don’t even flick a whisker or pause in their eating because they know they belong here. They are mine. They are immune.
But Macho Man knows and he hightails it across the street to run under the porch of another house that is mine, but he doesn’t know it.
And so, we do this dance, morning by morning. In spite of my efforts at selection, I feed the assemblage, family or stranger, good and bad alike, whoever shows up. I try to give the cats I know a head start, first dibs, but then duty calls, the day claims me. I can’t stand on the front porch all day brandishing my BB gun. It’s embarrassing. One morning a friend from the country rode by on her bike and I found myself waving with the gun in my hand. What the heck did she think? (She was too far off to explain.) Did she think this was the Wild West where you have to come out the front door with a gun to protect yourself from man or beast?
I don’t think so. We’re all veterans now to country life. Even I give up to the greedy-Gus cats eventually.
“I’ve had it,” I say. “You just quarrel over the scraps if you want. I’ve got more important things to do on another day in the country.”