Intruder on the porch

Sunday morning I woke up to noisy cats.

There was hissing, scratching, growling and pounding.

I didn't hear any evidence of actual pain, turned around and went back to sleep. (I did this without hesitation as I knew boyfriend was up already and that he would take care of things if they went ugly... I'm not totally irresponsible as a cat owner...)

Getting out of bed a half hour later and finding my way out to the kitchen, boyfriend hands me the camera and tells me to check out the two latest additions.

Here's one of them:

JumJum watching the intruder on the porch deck

Apparently my boyfriend had been in the kitchen when he heard both cats go insane with their hissings and growlings, scratchings and poundings. He checked things out and found an intruder outside the porch door. Skorpan (up on a chair to the left outside the picture) and JumJum were trying their best to get the intruder to leave, but he had stuck around for a bit checking them both out.

Isn't he beautiful?

And speaking of beautiful cats outside... Since the dreadful night in August last summer, I've had Skorpan on a leash when he's been let outside in our garden. JumJum has wandered around on his own but I trust him to stay within the garden's boundaries. It's been a hassle having Skorpan on a leash though. He doesn't mind getting the harness on or being carried outside to be hooked up on the leash. But he wants to get in and out a million times in an hour making it very hard for me to relax when he's out there whining...

So, now this weekend I let him out without a harness or on a leash. (We just finished up a new fence that makes me a bit calmer about having him out on his own...) And he was so incredibly happy about it, he ran around from flower bed to flower bed to roll around in the dirt and soil. He rolled and rolled in the leftovers of several tree trunks that we've had "ground down" to wood chip and mixed with the soil the trees grew in.

After five minutes outside my adorably silly black-and-white cat was an adorably silly grey cat with brown wood chips all over.

Skorpan's tail end after five minutes outside on April 18th, 2009

Honestly, he was all grey. In the picture, he might look like he was still black-and-white, but the sun's deceiving... I had to clean him up with a soaked towel while wrestling him in the laundry room.