I’ve been watching the weather forecast intently for several days. I recently dug out and resurfaced an old stock pond, and I’ve been hoping for some rain to give me some help in filling it.
Tonight’s storm was not in the forecast. The rain wasn’t supposed to start for another twenty-four hours or so, but at around two AM, the sky exploded, violently.
The thunder awoke me about thirty seconds before it knocked out the power. I don’t know yet if it’s just a local outage or if it’s more widespread. I’m not going outside to investigate.
There was no advance warning, but now we’re under a storm alert that predicts 60-mile-an-hour wind and quarter-sized hailstones. It’s not a hurricane. It’s not the worst storm I’ve been in. It’s mostly passed already.
The lightning was like a strobe light. There was no counting the seconds between the lightning strike and its associated thunder peal — it was everywhere, lighting up the outside like flickering daylight.
My cats are handling it well. I have more cats than I’d prefer, but I trap them here whenever possible. The average lifespan of a feral cat is two to three years, but for an indoor housecat life expectancy is twelve to eighteen. I’m happy to spare them from the highway, the coyotes, or my neighbor’s shotgun. I’m also happy to spare my wild bird population from the cats.
So tonight I have two on my bed and one under it, and a feral tom in each of my two bathrooms. All of them have been in one of my traps at one time or another.
Bob showed up on my game cameras for a couple years before I finally trapped him. He had a tail for the first year or so, then I didn’t see him for awhile, and when he returned, he did not. My assumption is that he lost it to a coyote, but I’ll never know for sure.
Bob’s neuter appointment got me a call from Animal Control. Apparently he bit a vet tech through a heavy leather glove, puncturing the top and bottom of her thumb. Since he was a feral cat with no vaccine history, he had to do a ten-day rabies quarantine before he could be vaccinated. I was keeping him in the bathroom for awhile anyway, so this wasn’t a problem.
I like my vet, but I was pretty annoyed that Animal Control was called. I’m told it’s the law here. I haven’t verified that, but in this case it doesn’t really matter — Bob didn’t have rabies, he got vaccinated after his quarantine ended, and the officer never followed up with me.
I continue to believe that the less contact I have with law enforcement, the better, and that includes ACOs.
Bob will probably never be a house pet, but I’m slowly integrating him with the other cats anyway. I’ll build an outdoor enclosure soon, that will be connected to the house, and he can decide how much time he wants to spend in each area.
A few weeks ago, he managed to turn on the bathroom sink, and close the drain. So the sink overflowed and water spread through a significant portion of the house before I realized what had happened. The bathroom door was swollen shut and could not be salvaged. The laminate flooring all had to be removed, but it revealed more valuable hardwood underneath. This is the second time I’ve bought an old house and found good wood flooring hidden under a top layer of something cheap and ugly.
It was a stressful night, but I managed to stop the water before it got to my guitars and my mom’s piano. When I get ready to remodel the house, I’ll sand and seal the floors and end up with something much more attractive and valuable than I’d initially planned.
As for Bob, he got his sink removed and a screen door put on the bathroom. Now he interacts with the other cats through the heavy screen, and there’s no water for him to turn on. I put a table and a cat tree in there for him to use as he wishes.
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It’s stopped raining, and the thunder is more distant now. Lightning isn’t illuminating the whole house anymore. The power is still out. It’s hot and muggy inside. Bob is calling to the other cats, maybe letting them know that he’s survived yet another trauma.
In the morning I’ll walk down and see how much water the storm added to the pond, and if the tarp stayed on my pallet of concrete. The forecast calls for several more inches of rain over the next ten days, but forecasts change by the hour.
Much of the millet and cowpeas I planted a couple weeks ago has already germinated, but this string of rainy days should really kick things off. The land is turning green again. It’s all alive.
And so am I.