The Patriarch

I kinda left the tale of the feral cats hanging there......

I was looking for pictures that I have taken of White Kitty.   But it seems they are all on the camera that I left outside in the rain....and like the recipe for the cake in MacArthur's Park, I will never have them again.

White kitty is a big old dumb cat that comes around and eats the food that I put out.  I first noticed White Kitty coming around last winter, Sooty and Cleopatra would be taking advantage of their respective timeshare arrangement in front of the sliding doors, when one or the other of them would let out a blood curdling howl.  I would bolt upright from wherever in the house that i was and come running.

Seeing White Kitty shoving his butt up on the frost covered lilac bush never seemed like adequate reason to have my heart beating 200 times every minute.  I would explain this to my spoiled indoor kitties and encourage them to be tolerant of White Kitty, and stop giving me a heart attack.  When Beat Up Kitty comes around there is not such a violent reaction!!!

And Beat up Kitty was coming around on a regular basis,  winning my heart with her "I wanna trust you but life has been hard on me" attitude.   And White Kitty was commin around with a "thanks for the food now ya wanna rub my belly"  attitude.  Not saying White Kitty looks like the winner of most loved kitty of the year.  He was always showing up shivering in the dead of winter looking for a handout.  I thought he and Beat Up Kitty were rival Tom Cats fighting for territory.  In spite of the fact that my affections were leaning towards Beat Up Kitty, White Kitty seemed to be the dominant Tom.  He would show up on my front step when Beat Up Kitty was hanging out and Beat Up Kitty would run away.  Same thing in the backyard, on the roof of my neighbors shed.  In spite of the fact that Beat Up Kitty looks like the tougher of the two, White Kitty was seeming the Alpha.

Then one fine spring morning I stepped out the front door to see Beat Up Kitty sharing a amorous tryst with White Kitty in my driveway.  I told myself they were two Toms fighting.  But  Grizabellas kittens a few months later were the proof in the pudding,  White Kitty is the neighborhood Tom deadbeat Dad.