Bogieblog

Quarantine

Big Boy has to stay in quarantine for a while longer. He has been taking it well.

At first the youngsters (hmm, can I call them that any longer?), pretty much ignored him. Spot still does for the most part, but Rainey is somewhat reactive with borderline aggression. Rainey will walk up to within a couple feet of the gate and sit and hiss if Big Boy is close to the gate.

This is strange since Spot tends to be the alpha and most outgoing/curious of the two, while at the same time being pretty accepting of situations and not holding any grudges. Rainey is reserved and gives way to Spot, and holds a grudge when something happens she doesn't like (like getting flea collars or spot-on type treatments). Perhaps the borderline aggression is insecurity. Or perhaps Spot has assigned Rainey to security duty - LOL.

Spot will occasionally walk by and look, but I haven't caught her hissing.

And of course, if there is going to be a picture of Big Boy, then the other two get their pictures also

Rainey on the top and Spot the next level down.

2023 Christmas Presents

Cop Car and HH send Christmas gifts that are always the right color and size. This year, part of that gift includes the following:

Occasionally thru the summer I had been seeing an orange cat where I throw bird seed in the southeast corner of the yard. In December, he was a daily visitor that seemed to camp out under the fir shrub behind the chain link fencing and eating from under the bird feeders. He was also drinking out of the bird bath in the sitting area. I put out feelers on the town FB page if it was anyone's cat. (I had done so back in June also). There were no hits although plenty of people in the neighborhood have seen the cat. A person that used to live in a property behind me said she thought it used to live in the barn behind her house. Another neighbor thought it might be one of the cats from my previous elderly neighbor - he had lost one of his orange cats before leaving for the nursing home (the other cat he found a home for).

So, I started putting out small amounts of cat food and a water dish. He was skittish for the first week, then would show up when I set out the food.

Eventually he would follow me where ever I set the food and I eventually got him up on the back porch. I set out a cardboard box with a pillow and he would spend the nights in it.

 

So, naturally, I got him a cat house. I received that on 1-4-24 and set it up that night. Since the house was a bit bigger than I thought it would be (my mistake, they showed inside dimensions, not outside dimension), I went and got a nice cozy bed that would help keep his body heat in even better than the insulation that came with the house.

At that point I was able to touch and pet him. I put out more feelers on pet finders and rescue group FB pages. Still no hits. This cat has short hair and not much of an undercoat, so I started thinking about bringing him in the house. The issue that I ran up against was keeping Spot and Rainy away from the orange cat (for both health and drama reasons). I couldn't close him in a room as that would take away heating ability from both the pellet stove and mini split. So I got a 61" tall cat gate, which has worked wonderfully.

Naturally I got him his own litter box for that room. Big Boy, which is what I have started calling him (and he recognizes now), likes to hang out in the bay window.

There has been no drama as of yet, which has surprised me. The first 24 hours, more or less, Rainy and Spot were weirded out because they could smell he was in the house. They kind of made the basement their home base for that time (coming up only to eat). Since then they slowly returned to their usual habits. The weird thing is that none of the cats (either the youngsters or Big Boy) have camped out by the gate - which is what I had expected to happen. That means they haven't been "introduced".  But that is fine for now as I still need to take Big Boy to the vet for checkup/shots (and probably neutering) as well as a chip check.

Surprise Visitor on 1/10/2024

Tuesday afternoon after clocking out from work I went out and did some shoveling of all the slush/mushy snow left from the 4-5" of snow then 1.5-2" of rain that morning. I cleared the driveway as well as all the roof dumpage areas such as the front porch steps and the path from the back stairs and fence gate. (as an aside, we are supposed to get a very similar storm tonight into tomorrow).

My quirk is that I use my back door almost exclusively (okay, there are reasons but they are boring and you don't care). As I got onto the upper level of the back porch and reaching for the storm door handle, I was looking to see what birds were at the feeders. At first I thought there were none, then I saw a bright flash of color out by the fence. Then it was gone, then I thought I saw it again.

I grabbed my binoculars and could see the tip of a bright orange tail sticking out to the side of a tall cake feeder. Then I could see a head on the other side that looked black (although it was shaded and cloudy in the late afternoon, so it was hard to tell). That feeder is big enough I thought for the longest time it was two separate birds. Then, it moved to the left side and much to my surprise it was a Baltimore Oriole. Sorry for the bad pics, but my phone was at 10x and that is the best I could do under the circumstances.

This next picture shows the orange all the way down the tail a bit better than the 1st pic

I was was surprised it was eating seeds. But then I remembered I had just replaced that cake the afternoon before. So I dug in the trash to find the wrapper, and this explains why he was hunting and pecking in different areas of that cake

And of course the biggest surprise was that he was here at all. Baltimore Orioles will summer in NH, but normally don't winter here. From All About Birds:

Migration

Medium- to long-distance migrant. Baltimore Orioles spend summer and winter in entirely different ranges. From early April to late May, flocks arrive in eastern and central North America to breed from Louisiana through central Canada. They start to leave as early as July for wintering grounds in Florida, the Caribbean, Central America, and the northern tip of South America.

I did report the sighting for a rare bird as well as posting of FB a couple of places. Apparently a couple of others were also sighted (from comments on the local TV ulocal FB page). Wonder if it (or they) got blown in by the strong winds of the storm and made the best of the situation.

I haven't seen him since then - but that tells us absolutely nothing since I don't watch the feeders all day and he could be either headed back south or visiting other areas to feed.