Mouseketeer #1 - NC
I saw him last night on the manure pile as I was going out to bring the horses in for the night. Still no luck recapturing our little scaredy boy.
Mouseketeer #2 - Ginger Boy
Will have the big snip-snip tomorrow as long as my vet doesn't get called out on another emergency and have to reschedule again. GB is VERY vocal, luring love with wails and trills. I'm hoping the neuter will turn down his volume a bit. He is SUCH a shameless lover and now a kept man that I've been considering asking him if he'd accept Gigolo as a name.
Mouseketeer #3 - Black Phantom
When I walked back out to manure pile after dark last night to try to have a calm talk with NC, NC was nowhere to be seen, but the Black Phantom's eyes glowed into my headlamp. BP wouldn't stand his/her ground, but I did get a good enough look to know my eyes weren't deceiving me the other day when I thought I saw Billy having a standoff on the manure pile with a black cat. Apparently, BP has decided to stake out the manure pile as his/her territory.
I baited the live trap with warmed tuna last night and set it on the manure pile. No takers this morning. It occurred to me that perhaps NC sprayed the trap with all sorts of fear pheromones the first time he got caught in it, and that perhaps that's why neither he nor BP will go near it now. I hosed it off thoroughly today and will spray it later with a concentrated catnip spray to try to make it smell more appealing. I'll set it again tonight and see what happens.
I'm wondering, also, if The Three Mouseketeers might be siblings. It seems mighty odd that three cats would suddenly appear all at once here on the farm. I could understand it if I had intact females around, or even intact toms, but I don't. I find it interesting that both NC and GB have extraordinarily long tails (a hereditary trait, no doubt), though GB has a much larger bone structure than NC.
I just want to get them all neutered and out of the fields before we cut hay!
Laurie
GB, mugging it for the camera.
