Showing posts with label kittens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kittens. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Every Rose Has Its Thorns

I remember there was a children's book about a king that liked cheese, but mice were eating it.  So he got a cat.  That took care of his mouse problem, but he didn't want cats around, so he got dogs.  The dogs made the cats leave, but he really didn't want dogs.  So he got an elephant, which got rid of the dogs, but what do you do with an elephant?  So he re-introduced mice which again started eating his cheese.  A very circular story about unintended consequences.

The owner of the farmland across the road sold his farm to a developer who is going to make a big subdivision out of it.  We talked about that in an earlier post.  We weren't thrilled about this, but what can you do?  The developer plowed the land. The farmland that had laid fallow for years and had grown up in weeds chest-high was now plowed smooth.  This displaced every critter that had made his home there, including rats.  They all, I presume, packed their luggage and moved on over to our place.

Our cats that were 16 years old both died, leaving us with no defenses.  The battalions of rats flanked us and in blitzkrieg fashion, stormed over the line, setting up a command post in our attic.  One day Tricia said, "Kyle, our telephone isn't working."  We called a repairman and he discovered that rats had eaten through the telephone wires in the attic.  What a mess!  So we got these two with the quickness.

It took them only a matter of weeks before we found them entertaining a rat and then killing it.  The Rat Killers are working!  But there's always unintended consequences.

Our youngest son began to complain about some bumps in his arm and this concerned us. We took him to our family doctor and Benjamin was diagnosed with Cat Scratch Fever.  So we have our rat problem solved, but now we have cat scratch fever.  So, I guess now, in keeping with the story line of the book, we need dogs and then an elephant?  I think not.  We'll take the cats to the vet and if the cat scratch fever doesn't go away, we'll use antibiotics.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Rat Killers

It has been almost 3 complete years since our two cats died.  Sheltie and Christie were sisters and were 13 years old when the last of their 9 lives expired.  We've missed having cats around. We've also missed their ferocious desire to hunt out and kill rats, birds and the occasional squirrel.

Since their demise, the rats have grown in number.  As they say, "When the cat's away, the mice play." We've seen the population of rats in the barn skyrocket and have even seen a few in the garage.   It was high time that we restored order around here.  We began looking around for kittens and found a couple of kittens from a friend on Tricia's facebook.  The kittens were sisters.  A few days ago they brought over a laundry basket of kittens and Russ and Benjamin each picked out one.

Russ' kitten is the one on the left and Benjamin's is the one on the right.  They are living in the garage for now, but we'll introduce them to the barn at some point.


At first we were a little concerned about how they would fare with Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees dog.  Big Boy makes sport of chasing down and violently killing possums, rabbits and other varmints.  We were thinking that Big Boy may enjoy eating our new kittens, so we kept the kittens in a kennel for a few days.  Then we released them while we kept a close eye on Big Boy so he wouldn't snack on the kittens.  Believe it or not, Big Boy wasn't interested.

How could you eat a kitten in a Croc?  Really...


For some reason they like sitting in my Crocs.


I have made a personal note to make sure I check the Crocs before putting my feet in them.  The kittens show lackluster skills in using a litterbox that the boys set out in the garage and I don't want to find a 'surprise' when I slip my feet into the Crocs.

Although I'm not a cat person, I have to admit that they are kind of cute.  They need to grow up quickly though.  Some of the rats on the property are much bigger than them.  The cats will have to earn their keep around here by putting a dent in the rat population.  We'll be anxious to see how our new Rat Killers perform.
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