Our two cats have taken well to out door activities and I will publish their respective tallies of the local wildlife (excluding butterflies, dragonflies and baby lizards, which we have decided don't count) at the end of the year.
Maigret is particularly outdoorsy - her thick and lush fur protects her from scratches, other than other cats, her perfect form means she is well placed for hunting and she doesn't set her sights too high. Poirot, on the other hand, is not well formed and her coat is much thinner. She also has large expanses of pink skin under white fur which all kinds of everything finds particularly attractive. Consequently she has had bites, eczema, scratches and fleas through the summer. She is also rather ambitious when it comes to catching things - pigeons (three this year), chickens (not ours, the neighbour's and thus very embarrassing), other cats, and her latest attempt was the garden toad.
Now Toad is a very good garden companion. He or his descendants have been getting rid of our slugs for the past 8 years at least. He generally stays near the house now, since we started to keep chickens 3 years ago, and favours the heaps of stone as his dwelling. Imagine his horror as he started to get his winter quarters to his liking when all of a sudden a white furry paw followed by a white furry face tried to get in there as well!
We presume he squirted some secretion or Poirot got some secretion on her paw, which she then stuck in her mouth. The upshot of it was that Poirot jumped off the rock pile and started whimpering and foaming at the mouth. She carried on slathering at the mouth for a good half hour. Initially we were really worried - we thought she had been stung - and then I checked round the rock pile and found Toad and realised what had happened.
Once she had been sick, we provided a wee morsel of tasty food to take away the taste and over the next hour she perked up, had a fight with Maigret, had her little lump of garlic sausage and then a bowl of crunchies and was fine. She won't go near the rock pile though!
I didn't have the presence of mind or heart to photograph the wild killer cat in her moment of frothing at the mouth, so here is an aerial shot of her pretending to be a jungle panther.
Neighbours' cats often roam the garden looking for small bird-snacks or frog-snacks. The toads, besides being cute, are industrious slug eaters and I am delighted to find that they can stand up for themselves against a giant monster cat!
Posted by: Elizabeth | 29 September 2008 at 08:55 PM
Yes, the hedgehog and the toad seem to have their defences! Maigret jumped on the hibernating hedgehog in early spring and got pricked toes so didn't do that again for a while. As pigeons are a pest round here, we don't mind the cats going for them however.
Posted by: Jane | 30 September 2008 at 11:13 AM
They might discover that pigeons have some secret weapon, too!
Posted by: Elizabeth | 30 September 2008 at 09:21 PM
So far, the weapons/defences produced by the pigeons have been intense stupidity (not really a defence that), being able to be in high places (probably the most challenging) and fleas. As Poirot is a martyr to fleas, this last has been the problem. However we got the last laugh, as the ultimate weapon in the defence against pigeons is to get a mason to seal up the holes in the eaves where pigeons nest, and at a slightly eye-watering expense, that is what we have done. I must do a post about our mason....
Posted by: Jane | 01 October 2008 at 01:52 PM