The abandoned cats I mentioned a couple of months ago? I'm owned. The friendly one has officially taken over and is now ferreting out dust bunnies I didn't know I had. [a cat ferreting out bunnies? Something's terribly wrong with that sentence...]

I fed her. I don't know what terrible, dangerous precedent I'm setting. I had decided not to do that before my trip, as I thought that would have been confusing for her, but now that I'm back, I'm kicking in food. Too, a neighbor and I have an informal agreement to look after the cats, so we'll be sharing the job. So probably I'll have to get a cat box and take her to the vet at some point, unless he does it. We'll have to talk about it. Amazingly, he's already inherited another cat that some jerk left behind last year, so he's a pro at abandoned cat management.

This is tougher than it sounds though. I love cats. I've spent most of my life living with cats. I've long wanted one or two again, but my crazy non-schedule schedule of the last few years--with long weeks or even months out of town--just doesn't lend itself to responsible cat ownership.

Responsible Cat Ownership. Now that it's clear that her former owners actually really did abandon her, I can be officially angry at the cavalier attitude some people seem to have with pet ownership (oh, sorry, it's 'animal companion guardian friend or something'). Damn, as if it wasn't obvious, they're animals, not old black velvet paintings with cheap balsa frames that you can just leave out by the trash bin on move-out day, assured that they'll find a new home in a landfill. No, leave the cats out with the trash and you risk killing them--slowly or quickly--or that they'll become miserable, black-hearted feral monsters, or disease vectors, or just another garden variety hill beast rooting around in your trash and having fights with the coons and insane squirrels, and who needs that racket?

Luckily, here, there's me and the neighbor who feel like it's our responsibility. It helps we love the little freaks. I think the agreement is that they'll stay mostly outdoors since it's what they're used to and they clearly like it, but we'll make sure they're fed and happy and get attention, and when it gets cold and wet, they'll have a place to sleep. That is, 'they,' if the other skittish grey one ever decides to trust another low-down, no good human ever again.