BACKGROUND
Growing up I always hated cats. They were pointless and they always seemed to scratch everything and everyone. So a little history as to why we have cats since I've never liked them. When we bought our house they told us theyhad a problem with mice which is completely normal living in the counrty and especially since we have the grain silos in our backyard. I figured mice are no big deal. Well there was always a weird stinch in the basement bathroom that we tried to ignore. In fact one time my dad came to visit and the spare bedroom upstairs was starting to smell really bad. (It is right over the basement bathroom) And said something about maybe it was the septic, but no other room in the house smelled. So Josh and I concluded that my dad was just getting old and couldn't tell if it was coming from him or not. Well it was about a week later and josh and to fix the basement shower and decided he would punch a hole in the wall to see if he could find where the smell was coming from. DEAD MICE, about 15 of them, stuck between the studs behind the sheet rock. DO NOT USE DECON! So decon kills mice, but as it kills them it makes them feel cold and so they move to warm places. Alright, so everytime someone showered the steam magnified this dead mice stinch which is why the spare bedroom smelled so bad. Sorry, dad. That's enough background. Sorry - I know it's disgusting.
So we can't use decon and mouse traps work ok, but...
mouse traps + cats = no mice
They even leave little mice treats on the porch for us.
GOOD PRACTICE OF TIMES TABLES
They multiply so fast but die off so quickly. We started out with 2 kitten about 2 years ago. A male and a female, we didn't know this at the time, but they were so cute little. Then we started getting stray cats... Let me tell you, for months I tried chasing them off, literally I ran after them to try to scare them from coming back. There was one brave soul though, a female, that is now a permanent resident. So then we had three.
CAT MATING
I am sorry but I found this pretty entertaining. So the next summer when they were bigger our male cat knew what he wanted to do, but couldn't figure out how to do it. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. It seriously took I a good couple weeks. On top of that, every night we would be awakend to cat fights outside when other stray, male cats came. Again I would try to chase them off. Anyway we started with I think 14 cats between the two females. WAY TOO MANY. I hadn't figured out what I was going to do with them. That is when nature took it's course.
THE CIRCLE OF LIFE
The neighbors had told me that the road and busy cars help to down size alot as cats wonder across. It was working for us. A couple did die right after they we born so we were down to 13 ish. Then it seemed as though almost everyday for 2 weeks we would walk outside and there would be a baby kitten dead on the patio. It was really sad, especially to not know the cause. It became routine for Josh to come home from work and dig another hole. The conclusions we came to were 1. It was the neighbors dog (which they did tell us really hated cats), 2. It was another male cat (not the biological father) male cats, maybe males in general, are territorial, or 3. It was the biological father because once the female is pregnant and has her kittens, she is done mating, but the male is not. We ended up with only one kitten which worked out good because it replaced one of the mothers that died from the road. It is really sad, but then I realized, the dog kills the cats, the cats kills the mouse or the bird. That is the food chain, except I don't think the dog eats cats. That's the country life.
NEW KITTENS
So the one surviving mama kitty was pregnant, she was huge, and then one day she wasn't so we knew she had he kittens. We could not find them anywhere, which is another cat instinct. They hide their babies so they don't get killed for reasons 2 and 3 above. It has been like 4 weeks and we could not find them. Another thing the female will do is move her kittens from one place to another to protect them. Well, finally today, she moved them into the cat house. I was so happy. There are 3 babies and they are so cute and fun. We were excited. I am sure she had more but they probable died after they were born, because she had them hidden really well. So here are some pictures of the boys with the kittens. Look at those blue eyes!
