Sunday, January 29, 2012

Hope

I've written before about Hope and her little cat friends that visit her in the backyard.  One cat seems to belong to my back fence neighbor, and is her most frequent playmate.



Last summer there were 2 feral kittens that joined in the fun.  One in particular hung out with the neighbor's cat.   Somehow all of the kittens (there were 4) have disappeared.   I can only hope that they found homes, or were 'rescued'.



The apparent father of the kittens, is the first cat that I saw after closing on my home.  He is such a wonderful character of a tom cat, and I refer to him as "Poppa".   He will let me get fairly close, but is not at all wanting to be friends.



He doesn't seem to dislike anyone, except the neighbors cat, for lack of his real name, 'Fluffy'.  Fluffy appears to be neutered, so am not sure why Poppa doesn't like him.

The other night Halle was pawing at the windows which she does when any foreign cat (she has no cat friends!) is in the yard.  Hope starting whining to go out, so I let her.   She immediately went into full blown protection mode, barking fiercely at something at the back fence.  I wasn't too sure what it was, figured it was a creature of some kind, maybe a river rat or a possum.



The next day Poppa walked by our front porch, and Hope rushed the front door barking hysterically in the same way she had outside the night before.   Fluffy will also hang out around our front porch and when he does, Hope whines to go out and visit.

The fact that she is discriminating between these two cats is just amazing and funny at the same time to me.

My theory is that she knows that Poppa is mean to her BFF Fluffy (or BFF #2 with Halle, #1), and so she's taking up for Fluffy.

Isn't friendship wonderful?