Cats and Squirrels and Dogs

What a tricky mix

Pic of my squirrel taken by me.

I’ve been feeding a little squirrel, although he’s probably at least a half dozen different squirrels. There’s two for sure, one is quite aggressive to the birds that try to take the food.

Squirrels are social creatures, and once they know you’re feeding them, they come around every day.

I have a woodlot on both sides of my driveway. We also have a family of semi-wild cats living on one side, and I feed them too.

This all started out by feeding the cats around here. Someone years ago, dropped off cats. Really beautiful cats. It’s large farms and acreages out here. In the long stretch of road I’m on, there’s five houses. One family owns three of them.

I cannot understand how people can just drop off their pets out on a dirt road and leave. Our neighbour got his dog that way. He found an older dog in his yard that he’s sure someone just dropped off. He’s had her for over ten years now.

Some people are simply assholes to their pets. They don’t know that they’re going to survive when they drop them off. They don’t know if there’s a coyote problem where they drop them off. Plus, these cats have a real fear of humans. I try to make their lives a little more comfortable.

Of course now there’s more cats. At least six. Three are around a year old. One about three months old. No one can get near them, they’re terrified of people. I don’t even know where their den is — I don’t want to scare them away from their safe spot so I don’t go looking for it.

They show up looking for food, and I put it out in a sheltered spot. I try to keep them fed and warm in the winter months. The neighbours feed them too if they’re around their area. There’s less mice now.

There was one day we went into the city last winter to pick up another vehicle. It took two hours to get there in heavy snow. We stopped for gas, as well as all the other stops. The other vehicle needed a jump start, so my husband put up the hood on our car, and said “there’s a kitten in there!”. I ran over and grabbed the kitten just as she was jumping out of the engine compartment in a panic.

She must have been too scared to try to get out at any of the many stops we made…