So, I guess this is, or, will be, my repository, and thread of rodent hunting tales.
In the title, I suggest that this is part two.
Reality: I'm fairly new here, and, have only just started posting here. I have posted for a longer time over at
GTA - Me vs. My Cat, and, that is where pt. one of this tale is chronicled.
So, this being part two, I'm going to start where we are at currently. But, I am also going to include past hunting antics, of both myself, and, my cat, Kitty.
Kitty,.... She is a ferocious hunter. Seriously. But, she really only hunts Rodents, and leaves my wifes birds alone.
Me: I'm probably the worst shot in the west, especially over the last year, since I've been declared as legally blind. In that time, Kitty was kicking my heiner in the rodents kill column.
But, I've had both eyes overhauled and new lenses implanted; I'm now bionic. This has all played out since early March. I've since upped my game.
Kitty - my competition:
On her own single bed, never used by humans; in her own bedroom, with front and side windows, and her own side slider door entry:
She came to us from our wild edge, which is probably 15 acres of open, wild steep hillside land.
That hillside is steeply rising above us, rising from our houses base elevation of mid nine hundreds of feet in elevation, and rising sharply to nearly 2000ft elevation. That mountain is an extinct volcanic cinder cone from a billion year old volcanic cycle here.
Kitty was abandoned when the landowner above us sold and moved on. She moved herself into the wild edge, and, lived for the better part of two years in the wild, and amongst nightly large packs of Coyotes. And if you don't know, Coyotes eat Cats.
So, for two years, Kitty lived on her own, feeding herself on the local rodents, and avoiding being eaten by Coyotes. And she lived with us without our realizing it for probably a year and a half. She lived in a break line in our roof, where the roof changed elevations, and created a small crawl space. She found that crawl space, and called it home. It provided her with a safe nighttime escape from the Coyotes. To get there required a huge vertical leap (from a hillside) to get onto a horizontal patio caver beam, and then onto the roof.
We're not sure just how long she lived with us before we noticed her living on the roof. And she, and her boyfriend, Halfy, are the only cats that we've seen here in over 12 years of living here.
Halfy
was a feral male with all of his male junk parts still intact. We called him Halfy, due to him only having about half of his tail.
He was so elusive that I only saw him at hundreds of feet distance, and, then only when he was running at full speed away from us. For quite a long time, I thought he was a Bobcat, as he was a very large Cat, and his coloring was a nearly perfect match for Bobcats, and his bobbed tail,.... well, I thought that he was a Bobcat.
Halfy was an old cat, and sadly, after getting to know him, he had bad rear hips, and likely got taken out by Coyotes, or, Cars, as he had a large range to roam (literally miles wide as suggested by neighbors that saw him in other areas).
Kitty is a Bengal/Tabby hybrid, known as a Marbled Bengal. She has human hand in her upbringing, but we feel that she was a barn cat at a neighbors horse property. She knows how to behave around people, but, was on the verge of being a feral cat (neutered, but living on her own)..
We've since, allowed Kitty into the house, and, she sleeps with me on the bed. I made her her own 'tuffette" to sleep on, as I don't want to steamroller her in my sleep. I'm a really big guy, and, could faltten her in a hot second.
