A black blur leaps off my porch, runs under my car, and vanishes around a corner. What? I've just parked in front of my house after work and it takes me a moment to process what just happened. Oh yeah, it's the neighborhood stray cat.
A puzzling creature. Is he friendly? Where does he find food? Does he find enough food? I don't know the gender, who it once belonged to, or the name. All I do know is that he's got long black hair and no one in my cul-de-sac owns him. One neighbor speculates that he used to belong to a former renter in the area, and was left behind when the renter moved away. Another neighbor said she'd try to catch him and bring him to the local shelter, but that hasn't happened yet.
He's got an ongoing challenge with one of the neighbor's outdoor cats, a black short-haired one. My husband and I amuse ourselves by watching these serious interactions from our kitchen window. Mystery Cat crouches in our yard, peering at Short Hair around another porch ten yards away. It's a feline staring contest. Mystery Cat ever-so-slowly moves closer, staying next to the edge of the next door house. After a couple tense minutes, Short Hair turns around and walks away, apparently ending the episode. Mystery Cat carefully leaps up onto another porch and settles down to watch from there. He's probably plotting their next encounter.
Personally, I don't mind cats. I'm not superstitious about black ones, either. On the other hand, I haven't tried to interact with this mystery. I'm not trying to scare him away. I'm not feeding him, and I'm definitely not petting him. I doubt he'd let me, anyway. I just observe him from afar. It's kind of like startling a flock of birds from the fields. They know they own the place; they're just leaving out of self-protection, only to return later when it's safe again. He was probably warming himself in the sunshine on "his" porch today. He leaps away as any outdoor cat does, all efficiency and stealth. I chuckle to myself. He'll be back again tomorrow.
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