New Cat on the Block

This morning I was pouring another mug of coffee (brr!) and saw out my kitchen window a cat walking on the gardening ledge on our back patio. I'd seen her a couple times before walking on our back fence, but never IN the yard, right by the house. She (I discovered later she was a she) was very comfortable and relaxed. She sat down at the corner of the ledge, by the back door, and just watched Carmen as she hissed at her from behind the glass, tail fat and bristled and ready for a fight, tiny but vicious teeth bared.

Samantha just watched curiously and didn't hiss or growl even once. I decided she looked like a Samantha - Sam for short. I took a couple pictures of her from the house and thought she might be hungry so I filled an old feeder with some water and a bit of food and slowly opened the back door, watching for Smiley or Carmen to be hot on my heels. At this point Smiley was all worked up, too; he and Carmen had been stalking each other around the living room as though they each were a foreign invader cat and they were protecting their territory.

Are you coming out or not?

I shut the door behind me and Samantha walks right up and rubs against my legs, flopping herself on the ground and rubbing her little face into the patio, her soft white belly and brown ears covered in dirt and leaves. She has a short face, not as long a snout as Smiley and Carmen; she has a shorter tail, too, more like Carmen – Smiley’s is long like a monkey’s tail. She is very friendly and seems to be comfortable with humans but doesn’t have a collar. I wonder who she belongs to and who is missing her. Hopefully she has a home; I hate for animals to be stray or orphaned and not have a consistent place to stay.

Samantha is more interested in rubbing my knee - I'm sitting crossed-legged by the door now - than in her food which I've set down beside me. I snap a couple more photos and she sniffs my basil and jalapeno sproutlings. She finally takes a few bites after thoroughly sniffing the food and the tray and my hands a few more times.

After several minutes with her and lots of petting and cooing on my part I am rather cold and go back inside. Samantha peers up at me through the widow in the door, held tilted to the left, as if to ask why I'm leaving so soon. I think how nice it must be to have a fur coat. She walks around the grass some and uses our yard as a toilet (even scraping up some leaves and grass when she's done).

She walks over to the corner of the yard and hops effortlessly onto the middle fence rail and then onto the top of the fence. She takes a few steps onto our neighbor’s fence and jumps - gone into the alley for more stray cat adventures. I just hope she remembers our yard is a friendly one and I'll always have some food for her if she comes around again.