A rough week

It has been a hard week at Prairie House.  A couple of days ago we lost Juliet to the highway.  We lost the little turkey that hatched with the chicken to an unknown malady.  The nest the barn swallow built sits vacant now as the barn swallow couldn't fly higher than Katie Kat could jump.  A snake that Karl Kat brought to the porch bit the dust...well, okay, that was an assisted death.  Tonight Katie Kat was lost to the highway also.

When their instinct is to hunt, they get so focused on their hunting they don't notice other things around them.  It always hurts so much when we lose them to either the highway or the predators but that is a fact of life on the farm.  Creatures get killed on dirt roads - I see their bodies when I deliver mail - so it isn't a problem only due to the highway.  The thing that really hurts however is that Evelyne and I were petting and playing with Katie Kat only a couple of hours before and she was following us around.  She didn't want to come into the house.  She wanted to play and hunt for exciting things.

We only have two calico cats left now.  One of those, Betsy (who suffers from the psychotropic alopecia) refuses to come into the house and will only go into the bus when it is on her terms.  She does sleep on the porch.  EmmaPatches and the 6 boys (plus Earl's Buster cat) are all safe in the house or the bus. We try to make sure they all go in at night to protect them from the coyotes, foxes, owls, opossums but sometimes they have other ideas.  All of our cats are spayed or neutered so unless we end up fostering kittens again we won't be having any additions.