Now that is one tuckered killing machine. She was outside for about five hours before she rattled the doorknob and I let her in. That means she was hunting in the weeds and sagebrush. Chipmunks, mostly. Sometimes she brings them to front door to eat. Evidently the heads, shoulders, and backs suffice. I always make her give up the prey if I can, because the chipmunks are covered with fleas. Usually she lets me, my being head cat and all.
What happened today was, I realized my hand in this. The simple act of putting out sunflower seeds for the birds has consequences far beyond a happy flock of piñon jays. So many seeds get scattered or stolen that I’m surely supporting a thriving community of rodents. This might be related to the fox and bobcat sightings. Coyotes are a given, and they eat chipmunks, too. So does the cat, of course. If I could just get her to eat sunflower seeds directly, instead of turning them into a chipmunk first, there wouldn’t be all this gore on the door mat.
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
Hilarious
My poor city kitties don’t get the natural life Callie does. They must stay inside or be killed by idiot drivers!
The way cats cross their paws and feet is so cute! Makes them look well-mannered and docile, and we know they are mighty hunters.
Be careful. The coyote will eat the cat as well as the other critters if he gets the chance. At least ine Massachusetts they do. NM is probably no diffrent.
Judy
Our two cats are indoor-only or they would be eaten by coyotes. So we put birdseed in the backyard, especially near the sliding glass door, and the cats stay there for hours watching the birds. The birdseed does attract the occasional mouse, who somehow finds its way inside the house. One of the cats is a good mouser and ends up hunting the mouse inside the safety of the house, leaving a small carcass for me to clean up.
She looks like a sister to our cat. He’s a seventeen pound Siberian of the same coloring as your Callie. His name is Moikoishky Biscotti, which is just to much work to say so we call him Cotti. He stays inside but loves the screened in porch. The only thing he hunts are moths and flies. I put a bird feeder outside the window where is tower is and he sits there and pops his jaws when the birds are feeding.
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