Dog and Cat Life

It has been awhile since I’ve written about Oscar and I’ve had a few requests lately to hear an Oscar update. For anyone who doesn’t know, Oscar is our feral cat that we have been feeding for several years. We’re not allowed to touch him. He doesn’t want in the house (trust me, we’ve tried for years). He only wants canned cat food, and it must be in certain flavors or he won’t eat it. He likes to hang out on our front porch during the day and look in the windows at us when we’re inside. I refer to this as Oscar watching his “zoo TV.” We’re the zoo animals, along with Jingle and Joy, and Oscar watches us for entertainment, and probably feels sorry for us. At night he switches to our back porch and watches us through our kitchen door.

Oscar has been doing his usual things lately. Lots of eating, lots of hanging out, lots of watching zoo TV. His favorite canned cat food these days is Turkey and Cheese with Gravy, and Chicken and Cheese with Gravy. At some point he’ll decide he doesn’t like them anymore and we’ll turn ourselves inside out trying to determine what flavors of canned cat food will be acceptable for Oscar.

Oscar was worn out from watching zoo TV and feel asleep on our bistro table last week

Oscar was annoyed with us that we had the nerve to sit on our back porch a couple of evenings ago. He sat at the edge of our yard and glared at us.

You might recall our recent addition to the Paradigm Farms Empire, Igor the kitten. Igor has settled in nicely to life at the barn. He goes out “catting” (Jason’s phrase) during the day, and at night he gets shut into the office of the front barn. Igor has come a long, long way from the starving, terrified, half dead kitten we found after Christmas. He likes to follow us around in the mornings at feeding time. He stays within the vicinity of the front barn. Since Oscar stays around the back barn and our house, Igor and Oscar have not yet crossed paths. It’s unlikely that they will. An interesting side note, I’ve now caught two fleeting glimpses of a black cat at the middle barn, so we may have another cat that has joined the Empire.

Igor and Timbit routinely play with each other in the mornings. Igor likes to cat flop in front of Timbit, and then Timbit rolls him back and forth with his nose.

Igor likes to be my feeding assistant in the mornings

Igor keeping an eye on the horses while they eat

Igor out “catting” as Jason likes to say

Igor and Ewen are buddies, Igor is the boss

Like Oscar, Igor has a hard life

Like Igor and Oscar, Ewen is happy and enjoying life. Carter saw this soccer ball dog toy that has a squeaker inside of it and insisted we buy it for Ewen. Clearly Carter has a keen understanding of Ewen’t likes because you can see from the pictures below that Ewen likes the soccer ball. I expect Carter knew that Ewen would like the squeaky soccer ball because Ewen loves to grab Carter’s soccer ball and run off with it. If you see random soccer balls in our pastures please return them to Carter. Ewen has carted off a few soccer balls at this point.

Ewen having fun with his soccer ball