Since my wife, the feral cat feeder, is out of town
today and tonight, it fell to me to take care of feeding all the feral cats on
her nightly route.  This involves putting
a whole lot of canned cat food together in a lot of large plastic containers,
adding dry cat food, and following her rather exact directions as to where to
place it all.

My first stop is the “feeding station” about 2/3 of
the way down the driveway from the house.  Here we have constructed a little fenced area (to keep neighborhood dogs
out) with an igloo inside on a raised area with a roof over it all.  I can see the ferals slinking toward the
place even before I have it all set out, but they wait for me to disappear
before they come in to eat.

Then I drive about two miles north of town to Lydia’s
Canyon.  This is about a 4 mile long box
canyon (i.e. dead end) with homes on either side widely spaced out along the
unpaved road into the canyon.  For about
8 years now, my wife has been feeding ferals in a little wooded area about 100
yards in from the highway.  Every
evening, rain or snow, dark or freezing, whatever, she feeds this colony of
cats.  She has also trapped them all and
had them spayed/neutered. 

I spread the containers of food around per her
little cheat sheet.  Perish forbid I
should deviate from these instructions.  I see three of the cats; there are supposedly 8 all told that are the
regulars there.  We have to take special
precautions in the winter, including shoveling paths into the place. 

Driving home, I congratulate myself on doing for one
night what my wife does EVERY NIGHT.  She
is a selfless cat lover, no doubt about it.  She is slowly aging into becoming a “crazy cat lady.”  About 50% of the pantry in our kitchen holds
cat food!  If I had to depend solely on
social security, I’d probably be close to eating it as paté on crackers.