Three Cats and Half a Beef

Yes yes, I did agree (reluctantly) to gift Goldie Shasta (did that make sense? "gift Goldie Shasta"?), but I'm certainly not the type of person to just have three cats! At least ... not the sort of person to choose to have three cats. (In general I like to see all animals--while touching or caring for ... none.) But cats just keep choosing to have us! 

Little Gray Cat, while not particularly liking us (though she does seem to feel far less threatened by Starling), has claimed her permanent spot here. (We just keep feeding and caring for her. How could we not?) 

And now we've got Biscuit: another little gray cat (a kitten really) discovered by Jesse in the hollow of a tree on the farm. 

(Jesse can't be seen in these pictures because he is pretty fully in the tree trying to check on the newly discovered kitten. Also ... he's wearing camouflage.)

The kitten was tiny, and frail, and mewing pitifully. All day we attempted to convince the kids (and ourselves) that some mother cat would surely be back to care for it eventually--hungry and half-starved though it seemed; but when Mike and Daisy (who left the farm later than the rest of us) pulled away that evening, and the hand-sized little critter came out from his tree to sit somberly and watch them go--accepting whatever its fate might be, they found they couldn't leave him to only hopefully survive.

(Can you spot Biscuit snuggled, E.T. like, amidst Anders' stuffed animals?)

(Biscuit asleep with his back end dangling off a bag of wood chips on our deck.)

And now we have three cats! True we keep them primarily as outside cats; still, it's getting quite out of hand. In fact, we all had a good laugh when, the other night, Abe had a dream that my mom brought him a big bag of temple name cards, and, snuggled amongst the strips of paper were four more gray kittens! (The way things are going around here, that dream seems a likely enough possibility.) 

In general I consider myself to just be holding animals at bay for as long as I can--with no delusions of actually keeping them at bay. More, I know, will gather to me--unasked--just like these gray cats! When Mike begins looking up dogs (I like dogs in theory but have never actually enjoyed owning) I try to wrangle him into agreements to wait till he's retired. And when our kids beg for hamsters and guinea pigs (which we have had over the years [Mike even had to dig up the bones of two hamsters that died in WA that Abe could not leave behind]) I tell them that once we get to Logan they will have outdoor animals to their hearts' content, and I should at least be spared any more indoor ones.

What I fail to mention to them is that a portion of those pets will be ... for eating. (Shhhhh! Don't say it!) In fact, as we speak, Mike is picking up the "half a beef" (half of a cow ... in the form of packaged roasts, steaks, ground beef, and stew meat [what half our kids choose for their birthday dinner--beef stew; I was surprised they had to ask if we wanted any cut into stew meat]) that we ordered from the guy who currently rents part of the College Ward land. (We even had to buy another freezer to store it all!)

But of course most of the animals will be safe. There will be pygmy goats--not because we have any interest in eating them, but just because they are fun to watch and hear. And our chickens have always lived as long of a life as they've been able to manage. (Which, mostly thanks to dogs, they can't usually manage very long. But, we've been willing to keep them long past their egg laying days. And most of them, short or long lived, have even received rather grand funerals! [I wonder how many chicken graves are around our yard. And if we should mention that to any potential home buyer. Ha!]) And as for pigs: would we eat them? It's hard to say because I have adamantly insisted on no pigs at all. (I have my reasons!) But that Mike can't always be trusted. ... 

Anyway. It will be interesting to see. 

In the meantime, here are a few remaining pictures from the day at the farm when Biscuit was discovered:

(I like zooming in on the photo below. Starling appears to be busying herself with making a small cairn of sorts from wood chunks left over from Mike's barn lean to.)

We'd gone to the farm for Mike and Daisy to do some more work on the lean to. (Mike had taken Abe up for most of the building project, but Daisy is perfectly handy in her own right. If Mike isn't around and I need something figured out or put together, I always ask Daisy to do it. She has a knack for those things.) Sadly the county has since rejected our request for this small, non-descript, non-threatening lean-to. For a number of reasons that I shan't type here, dealing with that small matter (and trying to get anyone to respond to emails or calls to get it dealt with ) has added another blockade in the line of barriers to building in Logan. But. We shall see. 

And, to end: one other type of wild animal we will be keeping at the farm.