Sunday, July 12, 2009

Jerry

When we first moved into our home a year ago, a stray cat showed up outside.
We named him Jerry.


We put food & water out for Jerry, eventually offered for him to come inside, but he declined. He never lets us pet him, he always keeps his distance. He seems to be happy living outside, free to do what he wants. He travels around the yard/property, but usually returns twice a day, for his morning and evening meal. Sometimes he sleeps on the chairs on our front porch at night.
Often we see Jerry hunting the wild mice, birds, woodchucks and wild rabbits - he likes to play tag with the woodchucks; they ignore him. The rabbits are too big for him to actually hunt, but he enjoys pretending. In return for food, Jerry does his best to keep our property rodent-free. He would get rid of all the birds, too, if he had his way.

11 comments:

Country Girl said...

He's a beautiful cat!

Randy said...

He kind of looks like Pepper, who passed away last year.

Lee said...

Ah, he's cute. I like the tail as foot warmer. My current cat doesn't do that.

Our recent outdoor cat (Piper) disappeared after only two or three weeks. She was so friendly we think someone probably took her, but I'm going to miss burying a mouse every couple days.

I haven't visited your site since you changed the theme (I use a blog reader). 250 acres! Wow, that's so awesome, but exhausting sounding! What's your long term plan? Sheep, cattle, food forests ...

Country Girl said...

Wasn't Pepper longer and taller? He was one of your favorite cats of all times, wasn't he?

Randy said...

Barb- Yeah, Pepper was a sweety - he was only our 3rd cat, if you count the cat I had as a child (Little-One), and he was much larger than Jerry, for sure! Pepper was the size of a small dog!

Randy said...

Lee-
Jerry always uses his tail as a foot warmer, it's pretty cute. That's too bad about Piper, it's good to keep a cat outside to control the rodents. And it's nice when they're friendly.

Our property is labeled as a tree farm, which means we can harvest the trees for wood, although we really haven't done much with that. We've been clearing the vines, jungles & open fields, leaving the good hardwood trees behind to "harvest" one day. The work is never-ending, that's for sure. Right now we just want to keep the property wooded & natural. It seems so much of nature has gone away, been turned into subdivisions, plazas, and stores, especially in this area (20 miles outside Wash DC). In 50 years there will be little nature left here. We want to preserve that. We've seriously considered livestock, alpacas, sheep, one day we will get chickens (we've got to build a place for them first). We want to restore the house, too. We've got so many plans...

Cindy Garber Iverson said...

We have a little garden kitty that adopted our garden too. We call her Oreo. She was born to a feral mama the same summer we moved in. It took a number of years, but she eventually let us pet her and now she climbs up on my lap regularly to have a "love attack". I think Jerry will eventually trust you.

Cindy

Randy said...

Cindy - I wonder about Jerry; it's been a year & he's still not too friendly. But if you say it took Oreo a number of years, maybe Jerry will come around, too.

Carolynn Anctil said...

Jerry is gorgeous. He certainly keeps himself well groomed. It's too bad he won't accept your offers of affection. He doesn't know what he's missing!

He obviously feels safe & at home there with you though. He probably feels that he's keeping the place tidy for his tenants (you!). ;o)

Randy said...

Carolynn -Jerry knows he runs this place! Last winter we setup a home for him in the old abandoned barn out back- we put some bales of straw out there, and created little cubby-holes where he could cuddle up to stay warm, with back exits out of the bales in case a coon came in. We always see him walking towards the house from the barn, although I've never actually seen him in the barn. But he knows he's loved. -Lynn

Carla said...

Because I'm missing our kitty badly, and don't have much hope for getting another one, I looked around in your cat posts.
Shadow and Jack are precious.
In looking at Jerry and then at Jack, it looks like Jerry could be Jack's daddy. They have very distinctive shaped heads. Oh well, no matter.
Thanks for sharing.