Of cats and women

Let me tell you a story. It'll start out dark but end up better, I promise.

It begins with a big issue in the North-- the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. I live near what's called the Highway of Tears, Highway 16, where hundreds of women have gone missing and been reported to police but never really followed up and found.

The highway is basically required to get to services -- anything from medical to a welfare cheque -- but for a decade had pretty much no public transportation at all after Greyhound pulled out and before a raggedy string of municipal busses got put in very inconveniently. To access services you still need to sleep in downtown Prince George for a couple days if you don't have hotel money or relatives. So you can imagine a lot of people hitchhike, not on a lark, but under duress. Attend a funeral? Hitchhike. Visit family? Hitchhike. Get your government checque? Hitchhike.

Between that and the legacy of residential schools it's a very dangerous place, especially for people who society views as disposable. This is the same area where the police (RCMP) keep getting investigated for killing indigenous people but... well, let's just say that the most recent acquittal the indigenous guy died less than an hour after being hit, kicked, pepper sprayed, and punched by a bunch of police but it was ruled accidental and nothing to do with the police.

Anyhow, First Nations aren't thrilled about any of this, and there's a tradition of hanging red dresses by the highway to represent people who should still be here but who are missing. Additionally there are various kinds of demonstrations. Right now there's a gentleman walking from Takla Landing to Burns Lake to... raise awareness? Heal himself? Make a statement? about this. People from town are joining in-- not all indigenous, but that's beside the point.

He'll be walking along the highway by my property today. It was going to be yesterday but he's getting pretty sore after a couple hundred kms and has slowed down. My dog Solly jumps the fence, and although she's very friendly lots of people are scared of dogs so I've been keeping her indoors during the day while he's walking, just in case she decided to jump the fence and go solicit love from humans who might not welcome it.

Normally Solly jumps the fence several times a day and runs towards the forested area by the vacant cabin on my neighbour's land. He likes wildlife there, and there are a bunch of animals that hang out there-- lynx and bears sometimes, definitely foxes too, that sort of thing. I've been less concerned about this than I might because she normally chases into that forested area then comes back within twenty minutes or so, doesn't go towards th road or the highway, and it's much easier to keep predators away from the space when you can cross the fence so I've had the least predator losses ever so far.

But, Solly was in yesterday, so she wasn't jumping the fence to chase away predators. A goose had died (suspiciously close to an electrical cable, I checked it and didn't see chew marks but he wasn't touched though there were some signs of a seizure. He also wasn't super young, so) and I left picking him up and dealing with the body till later.

Well, when I went back later to get him, after Solly was inside, something had eaten the easy meat off the body. There was a pie of feathers where this had originally been done, and then the body had been pulled up against he fence where more feathers were scattered. As I went to pick him up I noticed... a small orange cat that came up, I meowed at it, it meowed back fearlessly and started ravenously chewing on the body through the fence.

He was not my cat, nor a known neighbour's cat, and his fur looked a little rough, like he'd been eating very cheap cat food or something. We meowed at each other a little, then I went and got him some kitten food because he looked Very Hungry and I had some kitten food in the house, which, high calories, he seemed like he could use.

Well, he was still there when I came back and wolfed down about half a cup of kitten kibble in just a few minutes. Solly came to take a look and was very polite (he was still on the other side of a 2" x 4" grid wire fence) and some other cats came around too and the cat alternated between wolfing down food, prring as I petted him through the fence, and hissing/growling at my dog and cats, mostly doing all three at once.

He kept meowing and purring when he had eaten all the food, so I went back and got another half cup, then another quarter cup after that. I probably sat there for an hour, petting him, petting my cats and dogs as they came around, observing interactions, and trying to figure out what to do. He was clearly a male and probably fixed from what I could see, ultra friendly, had an ear tattoo. But he was also very very thin -- I could feel the knobs on his vertebrae, and his pelvis bones -- his ears were abraded or sunburnt, and his claws were a combination of razor sharp and dirty/broken. Basically, he didn't look like he'd been home in a bit.

I wanted to pick him up and bring him into the house because of those predators in the field he was in, and so I could be sure to feed him more, but I couldn't get through or over the fence while holding a cat. So I figured I'd feed him at the same time every day there, and then Tucker and I could capture him in a couple days, when Tucker comes up for solstice.

Well, the cat finally slowed down eating, I finally got up and went to feed the pigs and shut the ducks in for the night... and on my way past I noticed him clinbing up over the fence onto my property. I went to take a look and saw him curled up under the quail shed.

Now, I have baby birds in the quail shed, it's secure. There's a space full of straw under it. Something in the last several days to weeks has been shredding the lumber wrap around it, which just gets whatever is outside into some plywood but it's been noticable that something was trying to get in, and something Solly doesn't completely freak out about. So I'm thinking, ok, this cat has maybe been living under here a bit, that'll make it easier to feed him and catch him.

As I walk up to him he pops right out and lets me pick him up. I carry him into the downstairs bedroom, set him up with some food, water, and a litter box, and he demands love and food for awhile.

I've posted his picture and as much of the tattoo as I can read on the town fb groups, emailed the neighbour (it's not hers), and called the vet with the tattoo number (the last digit is a bit faded though). I've done a bit of reading on tattoos, he may be 5-6 years old from Windermere? The vet hasn't called me back yet. No one on FB has claimed him yet.

He's drunk 3 cups of water in less than 24 hours, eaten a ton of food (I'm giving him small meals) and peed in the litter box nicely though he's not pooping yet (I think he was pretty empty). He snuggles and purrs whenever I go into the room. My cats are pretty ok with him being in that room, though Little Bear is unsurprisingly curious.

So that's the story of how I have a stray cat in my bedroom, how Solly is an effective predator control that the farm notices when she's kept inside, and how institutional cruelty and neglect lead to bad situations but people are struggling to right them.

Also holy man, what are people on when they say cats are aloof? I can't walk three steps without getting mobbed by cats who want love, and this strange cat who doesn't know me was no different. I guess there's very strong selective pressure for it, though I wonder what effect neutering has on that?

Predator pressure

I walked down to the highwayside of my property today to hang a red dress along the highway. I very very rarely go there -- it's a wildlife corridor along the highway, in my mind, and not really for me to mess with. I noticed a bunch of stuff.

For one, there's a lot of water down there. The cattle dugout behind my fence trickles down into the aspen woods, and at the far end of those woods by the highway there's one of these ephemeral ponds. I had to look closely to make sure it wasn't a beaver pond, but of course there's not enough of a stream for it to be beaver. When the glaciers scraped over this land not too long ago, and when the big glacial lake was settling into the Prince George and Stuart Lake areas, a lot of clay-bottomed wetlands were formed. These are basically impermeable shallow basins that fill up with overland flow water, and then dry out by the end of the year if there's no reliable inflow.

There are also a lot of trails. They're obviously animal trails; it's unclear to me how much of the paths through grass, wildflowers, young trees, and larger forest are Solly, how much are large animals, and how much are made by smaller ones. That said, I saw droppings from the young moose, deer droppings, and at the southwest corner of the property many poops from a very large bear. I also mostly didn't have to duck for the paths through smaller trees. So it looks like my wildlife area is doing what it's supposed to and providing habitat, kind of as a tithe for using the rest of the land.

I think they also recently did some culvert work under the highway down there. My highwayside ditch is significantly wetter than I ever remember. We're still in a low-level drought, and the last couple years have been heavy drought, and it really matters seasonally what time I go there as to whether there's water. But still. Lotta water.

I didn't see clear signs of smaller predators like foxes, coyotes, or lynx but I also wasn't really looking. I know foxes hang out at my neighbours. I also see them on the highway or in parking lots every once in awhile.

Anyhow, Solly is doing a fantastic job in the back and she's a very good girl. Now if only she could stop eating her collars. Everyone has a microchip and their vaccines now (I would have assumed everyone who was neutered got a chip but turns out they didn't. That's now remedied) but as the stray cat reminded me it's nice for people to know someone is owned by some sort of clear sign, especially since she's so skinny. She is in fact skinny enough from jumping the fence and running around that I'm going to put her on a puppy or performance food for awhile and see if that helps.

Today was a very active day -- planted several garden rows with corn (gaspe x saskatoon bicolour ears), gold rush beans, batanka wheat, dango mughi barley, zesty green x silvery fir tree F2 tomatoes, some napa kind cabbage starts, and then marker calendula and radishes in with those seeds. I'm just doing a couple rows at a time but I'm working through it. Then there was the walk back to the highway.

So I spent the rest of time splitting love among the cats. I can't imagine how someone can dump an animal that is so openly affectionate. Normally my imagination is pretty good, but my neighbour who's done some cat rescue says this is "the season" and having enough folks do it that there's a season? Ugh.