Yello!

Since I posted a picture of one of our kittens, I thought I should put a picture up of the most distinctive cat on the farm – a cat we call the Watching Cat. Although he’s not nearly as cute as the kittens, he does have quite a personality. Several years ago as a young tom cat, he had the very annoying habit of “marking” just about everything. That included our back door, the bottom of the grill, and…well, yeah, you can probably see how that got annoying. When we were enclosing our front porch to make what is now our sunroom, the carpenters were working with the new decorative header that was to go above our two front French doors. They needed something that they left in town, so they left for about 15-20 minutes. When they came back, sure enough, the smell told them that Watching Cat had been there…and left his mark on the new wooden header! So that got Francis to thinking that something needed to be done. To make a long story short, Francis used some little rubber bands that helped to turn the Watching Cat into a more well-mannered, but less masculine, tom cat. Let’s just say that he never really knew what happened to him.

Now our Watching Cat just sort of monitors everything that happens here on the farm by, well…watching us! The picture below shows him as I found him this morning when I got up…peering through the front door just to see what we were going to be doing today. He basically watches us 24-7. He has figured out how to perch on just about every window sill and sometimes even hangs from the screen so that he can spy on us. We have joked about outfitting him with a tiny camera attached to the top of his head – it might be interested to see ourselves from his vantage point.

This past summer I went into town one day for an hour or so, leaving the television on in the living room. When I returned I was surprised to see that the Watching Cat had somehow let himself into the house and was lying contentedly in my recliner – watching The Price Is Right! What a cat!

A few weeks ago we got up earlier than usual on a Saturday morning and were rushing around the house getting ready to go someplace. Francis heard a commotion at the bathroom window as he was shaving and turned to see the Watching Cat clinging to the screen peeking in on him. A few minutes later Watching Cat was on the deck by the patio door meowing loudly seemingly trying to get my attention. I mentioned it to Francis and he said “Oops! I forgot to feed the cats!”. We think Watching Cat surveyed the situation, saw that we were hurrying around more than usual, and thought he’d better get our attention or he wasn’t going to get his breakfast! What a cat!