Feral Kittens

 

I've been continuing to feed my feral cat friends.  There is one tomcat, a yellow tiger cat.  Two females, one black speckled little cat I call Speck, and a grey tabby.  There used to be a pretty grey tomcat, but one day "Ole Yeller" showed up scratched to ribbons with bald areas, and the grey tomcat never came back again.  

The Ole Yeller is the only one of them that has been at all friendly.  He follows me inside and wants to see what's in the refrigerator.  He wants to be petted, too.  

Question.  What if the ladies have kittens?  Well, this morning there were two grey tabby kittens with the grey tabby cat.  I went outside and they arched their backs and hissed.  When that didn't frighten me they ran away.  They were not tiny kittens, but just short of half grown.  

I looked out the backdoor later and saw a black speckled kitten with Speck.  This one was much smaller.  I opened the door, and the black kitten had run away, but there was a yellow tiger kitten.  Wow.  Ole Yeller's kitten.  It was also with Speck, but Speck kept her distance.  The kitten was too young to be able to figure out what to do, and I reached down and grabbed it, to its mother's horror, and to its own shock and horror.  "The goblins have my baby!" she thought.  I took it in and showed it to my mother.  It was putting up all the fight it knew how to put up.  I think it was a little surprised to be overpowered.  It howled loudly and put up a vigorous  defense.  I wondered if it would tire of putting up a fight, but I was tired of the kitten anyway, and took it to the backdoor and tossed it from there onto the grass, since I supposed if I tried to put it down I would be scratched.  

It landed with a thud.  Its mother was still at the backdoor puzzling over what to do.  As soon as it landed, it leapt up and ran into the bushes, along with its mother.  

I'm not going to feed an ever expanding colony of feral cats.  I think they'll go away when I quit feeding them.