I spoke too soon...

Remember the 3 cats that I wrote about in the post directly beneath this one? Yep. I spoke too soon. I don't have 3 more cats. I have 6 more cats. I'm hoping that number stops at 6, and as of right now, I'm 99% sure that it does. Last night I decided to try to figure out what the heck is going on in my backyard. My yard is completely fenced in by the way, which makes it a little more interesting to me because they guys (or their mother) had to find their way over the fence to find my shed in the first place. While jumping over a fence isn't exactly hard for the average cat, I still don't completely understand why they chose MY fence to jump over.

So last night was observation time for me. I turned on a light in the backyard and turned off the lights in my living room. Then I sat at the window like a crazy cat lady, for almost 2 hours, watching the show outside. In this time, the 3 original cats appeared. Then a brown and white tabby appeared. Then another black and white one appeared, and then another black and white one. All of them were eating the food I left out for them and all of them were playing with each other. The little tabby is the only one who looks a little different. They all have different distinct markings, but they are all black and white, so I'm not sure where the brown tabby came from. I know he could easily be from the same litter, but I just always think its cute and amusing when there is that one odd one out (like my little calico from the litter I fostered).

So as I watched, this is what I figured out:

First, they know my backyard. They were way too comfortable running around, jumping on things, and falling asleep in the middle of the yard to NOT know the yard. I guess the reality is, I never looked at my backyard in the dark, and that seems to be when they come out and play.

Second, most of them are young, so while they could easily be feral, I've managed to tame a few young ferals already. Its hard and it requires a lot of work and patience, but I am thinking that if I can work with them, I MIGHT be able to get them friendly enough for people to want to adopt them. That might be wishful thinking on my part, but one of my ferals is a total snuggly attention whore now and she was just plain mean and nasty when I first brought her in the house.

From what I can tell, it appears that there are 4 young ones, maybe 5 or 6 months old, and 2 full grown ones. However, the larger ones can easily be the same age, just bigger cats. But it was the 2 large ones that sat in front of my shed and watched the 4 young ones play, so thats what makes me think they might be a little older. They weren't acting like kittens, but who knows, maybe they just weren't in the mood to play.

On a positive note, I also solved a scary mystery last night. For several months now I have laid in bed listening to what sounded like someone trying to break into my house through the roof. Actually, thats just what my wandering mind thought it sounded like when I was alone and scared. What it actually sounded like was raccoons running on the roof. If you're wondering how I know what raccoons on the roof sound like, they used to run on the roof of my house all the time in New Jersey. I know that there are raccoons on Whidbey Island, but I've never seen them anywhere near my house, so that explanation wasn't sitting completely right with me. I spent several nights completely freaked out by the noises on my roof. Well...as of yesterday I now know what the sounds are. There aren't raccoons running on my roof. There are CATS running on my roof!!! We have a tree with great climbing branches that sits pretty close to the house, and as I watched last night, the cats would run up in to this tree, jump from branch to branch, and then occasionally jump from the branch to the roof!! So it was quite a relief to hear the scary sound immediately after I saw a cat jump on the roof, so thankfully that mystery is solved. I guess no one is trying to break in, and I'm not being stalked by rabid raccoons. I am, however, being stalked by every stray cat in the world.

So the conclusion I reached? Perhaps I should make a better effort to pay attention to my backyard after the sun goes down. Maybe then I would have noticed an entire family of cats living in my backyard for the past few months.