While we have our two regular house partners, who live indoors, we also seem to have been adopted by a number of "strangers."

Our elder "real child" Bela (named for Bela Lugosi by LiK) was a more or less normal adoption. Her personality is reflected in her two nicknames, "Princess" and "Slut." She seems to have reached the age of senility and is frequently "confused" but remains friendly with almost everyone. Striped grey and her doctor says she's unusually "pretty."

Our other "homey" is Vincent (LiK named him for Vincent Price, of course) was thrown on our front porch one Halloween night by a party that immediately drove off in a hurry, so he's sort of a drive-by victim. We guessed that he was less than 7 weeks old then. We advertised widely, checked with the vets and Humane Soc., then took him to the vet and got him chipped, vaccinated, and registered. Two months later some neighbors showed up and tried to claim him, but by then he owned us. They adopted his brother and left him behind a couple of months later when they moved, but we could never get close enough to the brother make friends. "Vinnie" thought he was still a kitten for about the first 6 or 7 years but has begun to show lap cat tendencies at 8. Solid black (and quite handsome), so we obviously keep a close watch at Halloween.

Last December, one morning about 4:00 am I saw a "stranger" huddled in the sleet on Lin's "planter bench" (actually more of a plant killing bench the way she uses it) that's right in front of the window. Weather report said it was 14F (-10C) with sleet on the ground, and it looked "lost." It was wearing a collar, but the collar disappeared the next night. Some demented person felt sorry for it, and put some dry food and water out, and the cat demonstrated appreciation by displaying signs of starvation. Behavior suggested it might have been recently "lost or abandoned" by someone who moved, but we can't be sure.

As a result of continuing to put food and water out on the bench - now more a habit than necessity, we have four "casual friends" but no way of knowing which are homeless and which might "belong" to neighbors who are "careless about their care." We guess how wild they are by how far they run when the door opens, before they stop to see if you're dangerous. "Safety separations" seem to be decreasing for all four, but none have allowed any close approaches.

The one that's most obviously fully feral has a collar on that appears to cause some difficulty eating, but there's no way to get close enough to be sure or to do anything about it.

In addition, we have one "unknown critter" that dug a hole under the door on a storage shed in the back yard almost a year ago. "Something" goes in and out, but nobody has had a good enough look to identify what it is. Recently a second hole (that actually looks like a door) has appeared in a side wall of the shed.

I caught one fairly good glimpse of a "rump and tail" going in the front door. The rump was grey, and the tail was grey with a black tip. There may have been one or two "rings" on the tail; but not enough to suggest a raccoon, so we continue to think it's a cat. It's not one of the four that come to the feeder. (At least it had fur so it wasn't an armadillo.)

We're not really sure how many "new pets" we have, but we seem to have some new friends who hang around pretty regularly.

John